
Class ^P^AMl 
Book JD_5_„ 



GopghtN". 



COPVRIGHT DEPOSrC 



NINETEENTH CENTURY 
ENGLISH PROSE 

CRITICAL ESSAYS 



EDITED WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES 

BY 

THOMAS H. DICKINSON, Ph.D. 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EricLISH. UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 
AND 

FREDERICK W. ROE, A.M. 

•INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 




NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI -:• CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 



.JIS 




LIBRARY of COfiGRESS 


Two CoDies 


Repe'v0rf, 


JAN 2 


1909 


CopyriKdt tntry 
CLASS a XXc. No. 


COPV 


t^ 



Copyright, 1908, by 
THOMAS H. DICKINSON AND FREDERICK W. ROE 



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 



Nineteenth Century English Prose 
W- P. I 




6- 



PREFACE 

In preparing the present work the editors have re- 
stricted themselves to a single type of Hterary expres- 
sion, — the critical essay. They have endeavored to 
trace, in a series of ten selected essays, the development 
of EngHsh criticism in the nineteenth century. In 
choosing the material they have been influenced by 
something more than mere style. An underlying co- 
herence in content, typical of the thought of the era in 
question, may be traced throughout. 

The book is designed to furnish a series of essays 
covering a definite period and exhibiting the individu- 
ality in each author's method of criticism. The subject- 
matter in these selections provides interesting material 
for intensive study and class-room discussion, and each 
essay is an example of excellent, though varying, English 
style. It has not been the intention of the editors to 
place the different authors represented on the same 
level, either as critics or as stylists. Nor do they claim 
to have, necessarily, selected the best essay of each 
writer; they have sought, rather, to choose that one 
which appears to them to be most typical of the author's 
critical principles, and, at the same time, representative 
of the critical tendency of his age. 

A volume compiled to serve the ends outlined above 
3 



4 PREFACE 

needs few accessories. The introductions, mainly bio- 
graphical, are brief; the notes treat only those matters 
upon which investigation by the student would be 
difficult or unprofitable. 

With the exception of certain omitted passages from 
the poetry of Arnold and Browning in the Bagehot 
essay, the selections are given in their entirety. 

Acknowledgments should be made to the Macmillan 
Company for permission to use the revised form of 
Walter Pater's essay on Leonardo da Vinci, and to the 
Travelers' Insurance Company for permission to print 
Walter Bagehot 's essay on Wordsworth ^ Tennyson, and 
Browning. 

T. H. D. 
F. W. R. 

Madison, Wisconsin. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

William Hazlitt 

The English Novelists y 

Thomas Carlyle 

BosweWs Life of Johnson 57 

Thomas Babington Macaulay 

Moore's Life of Lord Byron 156 

William Makepeace Thackeray 
Swift 207 

John Henry Newman 

Literature 242 

Walter Bagehot 

Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning . . . 274 

Walter Horatio Pater 

Leonardo da Vinci 338 

Leslie Stephen 

Sir Walter Scott 369 

John Morley 
Macaulay 409 

Matthew Arnold 

Emerson » . . . . . 449 

Notes 4^3 

5 



NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

WILLIAM HAZLITT 

[William Hazlitt, the son of a Unitarian clergyman, was born 
in Kent, April lo, 1778, and spent two years of his youth in 
America. At fifteen Hazlitt entered the Unitarian College at 
Hackney, but as theology was not to his purpose, he remained 
only two years. Travel, cogitation on the rights of man, and at- 
tempts at portrait painting occupied the next ten years of his life. 
Not until 1805, when he published his Essay on the Prijiciples of 
Htcma7i Action, did he discover that his true bent was toward lit- 
erature. From this time on he became increasingly known as a 
rapid-fire critic on drama, and literature, and manners. In The 
Round Table, Table Talk, and The Spirit of the Age is found the 
commentator on men and affairs. In The Characters of Shake- 
spear's Plays, and The English Comic Writers is revealed the 
sagacious literary critic. Perhaps largely on account of his own 
unregulated deportment, Hazlitt's life was not a happy one. He 
died in 1830.] 

The following essay entitled The English Novelists is 
the sixth in the series of lectures on The English Comic 
Writers delivered by Hazlitt in 18 18. In its present form 
it is practically an adaptation of an earlier article, en- 
titled Standard Novels and Romances and published in 
The Edinburgh Review, February, 181 5, as a review of 
Madame D'Arblay's TJie Wanderer. There is nothing 
particularly striking in the structure of the essay. It 
follows in regular historical order the development of the 
novel in its beginnings in Spain and in England. Yet the 
design of this essay is more coherent than that of many 

7 



8 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

of Hazlitt's essays. Much of Hazlitt's journalistic work 
required a haste in critical judgment and in formulation 
of material that entirely precluded the larger excellences 
of architecture. In the preparation of this series, how- 
ever, the author was given time for his task, it was pleas- 
ing to him, and the result is an excellently balanced and 
clearly designed set of essays. 

When Hazlitt put into book form his series of lectures 
on The English Comic Writers, he was in his forty-second 
year. These essays may be considered the best expression 
of his mature years. They evidence a grown man's com- 
mand of his faculties and avoid that exaggeration of the 
characteristic that has perverted the later work of both 
Hazlitt and Thackeray. Hazlitt was thoroughly an 
individual genius. Though by no means an anarchist, 
he was, even in artistic matters, a vigorous controversial- 
ist. As such he was quite in harmony with his time, for 
his age was essentially a hard-hitting age. The regime 
of Gifford on The Quarterly Review had put the writers 
and the critics at swords' points. Keats was hounded to 
an early grave and Byron was moved to the stinging re- 
tort of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers by the very 
forces that kept alive the biting wit of Hazlitt. 

With Hazlitt it was not, as with Byron, a case of de- 
fending an outraged muse against the assaults of the 
critical enemy. Hazlitt wrote no pure literature he cared 
to defend. A critic himself, he set himself into opposition 
with the critics for sheer love of combat. As we read 
Hazlitt we are impressed with the immense vitality of 
the man. His thought and style were dynamic. He 
cared for a subject only so far as it had life in it. To 
him that which did not arouse enthusiasm had no ex- 
istence. He was passive in nothing; opinions to him were 
slogans; success he gauged in terms of effect. 

Hazlitt's own life is a clear index to his art. Character- 
istically he was vigorous and independent. First a 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 9 

revolutionary, then a Bonapartist, he tried successively 
preaching, painting, poetry, and ended his life an un- 
questioned authority on all the arts. Hack writer, 
philosopher, and grammarian, his memory was so reten- 
tive and his common sense so unerring that he drew truth 
even from errors of fact, and on narrow but carefully 
selected reading gave the impression of encyclopedic 
learning. 

Hazlitt's style has all the merits and defects of the 
author's profuse vitality. It is unregulated, unpruned, 
rich in allusion, lacking in reticence, but capable of mar- 
velously delicate distinctions. No critic's sense of differ- 
entiae has been more keen and veracious. The major 
effect of the style is one of unusual power and remarkable 
suggestiveness. Though it is in the main concerned only 
with thoughts, now and then an emotion thrills through a 
sentence and reveals in the author a mastery of pathos and 
the dramatic. Little felicities of expression are strewn 
lavishly amid the richer fruits of his invention. "He 
finds his fortune mellowing in the wintry smiles of Mrs. 
Tabitha Bramble," he writes in one place, and again, 
"Mrs. Radcliffe touched the trembling chords of the 
imagination, making wild music there." With no less 
facility did Hazlitt weave quotations into the texture of 
his composition and make the borrowed form appear to 
be in its native element. 

Hazlitt's quick mind and nimble wit were at their best 
in a hurried summary of an author's work. Sometimes 
in a hasty catalogue of apt epithets he would lay open 
before the reader an author's entire work. Of all of 
these perhaps the best is contained in the lecture on Scott, 
in which, in a long series, there passes before the reader's 
eye the procession of Scott's imagination. Hazlitt is 
most truly himself in the collection of essays entitled 
The Round Table and Table Talk. There "a lesser 
Johnson," untrammelled by artistic tenets of design and 



lO NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

reserve, he lays down the law to loving auditors. He is 
only slightly more formal in The English Comic Writers. 
The subject itself provided its own outline but it is saved 
from baldness by the richness of Hazlitt's fund of literary 
knowledge and by his very deep and genuine interest 
in the problems of humanity. We like Hazlitt best when 
he stops in the midst of his study to philosophize on the 
nature of men and women. For then most truly we see 
standing forth the stormy and passion-beaten figure of 
the man himself, a prototype of Carlyle on the one hand, 
and of Thackeray on the other. 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 

There is an exclamation in one of Gray's letters — 
"Be mine to read eternal new romances of Marivaux 
and Crebillon!" If I did not utter a similar aspiration 
at the conclusion of the last new novel which I read (I 

5 would not give offence by being more particular as to the 
name) it was not from any want of affection for the class 
of writing to which it belongs; for without going so far 
as the celebrated French philosopher, who thought that 
more was to be learnt from good novels and romances 

lo than from the gravest treatises on history and morality, 
yet there are few works to which I am oftener tempted 
to turn for profit or delight, than to the standard pro- 
ductions in this species of composition. We find there 
a close imitation of men and manners; we see the very 

15 web and texture of society as it really exists, and as we 
meet with it when we come into the world. If poetry 
has "something more divine in it," this savors more 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS II 

of humanity. We are brought acquainted with the mo- 
tives and characters of mankind, imbibe our notions of 
virtue and vice from practical examples, and are taught 
a knowledge of the world through the airy medium of 
romance. As a record of past manners and opinions, 5 
too, such writings afford the best and fullest information. 
For example, I should be at a loss where to find in any 
authentic documents of the same period so satisfactory 
an account of the general state of society, and of moral, 
political, and rehgious feehng in the reign of George II 10 
as we meet with in the Adventures of Joseph Andrews 
and his friend Mr. Abraham Adams. This work, in- 
deed, I take to be a perfect piece of statistics in its kind. 
In looking into any regular history of that period, into a 
learned and eloquent charge to a grand jury or the clergy 15 
of a diocese, or into a tract on controversial divinity, we 
should hear only of the ascendency of the Protestant suc- 
cession, the horrors of Popery, the triumph of civil and 
rehgious liberty, the wisdom and moderation of the sover- 
eign, the happiness of the subject, and the flourishing 20 
state of manufactures and commerce. But if we really 
wish to know what all these fine-sounding names come 
to, we cannot do better than turn to the works of those 
who, having no other object than to imitate nature, 
could only hope for success from the fidelity of their 25 
pictures; and were bound (in self-defence) to reduce 
the boasts of vague theorists and the exaggerations of 
angry disputants to the mortifying standard of reality. 
Extremes are said to meet; and the works of imagina- 
tion, as they are called, sometimes come the nearest to 30 



12 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

truth and nature. Fielding, in speaking on this subject, 
and vindicating the use and dignity of the style of writing 
in which he excelled against the loftier pretensions of 
professed historians, says, "that in their productions 
5 nothing is true but the names and dates, whereas in his 
everything is true but the names and dates." If so, he 
has the advantage on his side. 

I will here confess, however, that I am a little prej- 
udiced on the point in question; and that the effect of 

10 many fine speculations has been lost upon me, from an 
early familiarity with the most striking passages in the 
work to which I have just alluded. Thus nothing can 
be more captivating than the description somewhere 
given by Mr. Burke of the indissoluble connection be- 

15 tween learning and nobility, and of the respect univer- 
sally paid by wealth to piety and morals. But the effect 
of this ideal representation has always been spoiled by 
my recollection of Parson Adams sitting over his cup of 
ale in Sir Thomas Booby's kitchen. Echard On the 

20 Contempt of the Clergy is, in like manner, a very good 
book, and "worthy of all acceptation"; but somehow 
an unlucky impression of the reality of Parson Trulliber 
involuntarily checks the emotions of respect to which it 
might otherwise give rise; while, on the other hand, the 

25 lecture which Lady Booby reads to Law}^er Scout on 
the immediate expulsion of Joseph and Fanny from the 
parish, casts no very favorable light on the flattering 
accounts of our practical jurisprudence which are to be 
found in Blackstone or De Lolme. The most moral 

30 writers, after all, are those who do not pretend to in- 



THE ENGLISH NOVELIST 1 3 

culcate any moral. The professed moralist almost un- 
avoidably degenerates into the partisan of a system; and 
the philosopher is too apt to warp the evidence to his 
own purpose. But the painter of manners gives the facts 
of human nature, and leaves us to draw the inference; if 5 
we are not able to do this, or do it ill, at least it is our own 
fault. 

The first-rate writers in this class, of course, are few; 
but those few we may reckon among the greatest orna- 
ments and best benefactors of our kind. There is a cer- lo 
tain set of them who, as it were, take their rank by the 
side of reality, and are appealed to as evidence on all 
questions concerning human nature. The principal of 
these are Cervantes and Le Sage, who may be considered 
as having been naturalized among ourselves; and, of 15 
native EngUsh growth. Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, 
and Sterne.^ As this is a department of criticism which 
deserves more attention than has been usually bestowed 
upon it, I shall here venture to recur (not from choice but 
necessity) to what I have said upon it in a well-known 20 
periodical publication; ^ and endeavor to contribute my 
mite towards settling the standard of excellence, both as 
to degree and kind, in these several writers. 

I shall begin with the history of the renowned Don 
Quixote de la Mancha, who presents something more 25 

1 It is not to be forgotten that the author of Robinson Crusoe 
was also an Englishman. His other works, such as Life of 
Colo7iel fack, etc., are of the same cast, and leave an impression on 
the mind more Hke that of things than words. 

2 The Edinburgh Review. 



14 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Stately, more romantic, and at the same time more real 
to the imagination, than any other hero upon record. 
His lineaments, his accouterments, his pasteboard vizor, 
are famiUar to us; and Mambrino's helmet still glitters 
5 in the sun! We not only feel the greatest love and ven- 
eration for the knight himself, but a certain respect for 
all those connected with him, the curate and Master 
Nicolas the barber, Sancho and Dapple, and even for 
Rosinante's leanness and his errors. — Perhaps there is 

lo no work which combines so much whimsical invention 
with such an air of truth. Its popularity is almost un- 
equalled; and yet its merits have not been sufficiently 
understood. The story is the least part of them; though 
the blunders of Sancho, and the unlucky adventures of 

15 his master, are what naturally catch the attention of the 
majority of readers. The pathos and dignity of the sen- 
timents are often disguised under the ludicrousness of 
the subject, and provoke laughter when they might well 
draw tears. The character of Don Quixote himself is 

20 one of the most perfect disinterestedness. He is an en- 
thusiast of the most amiable kind; of a nature equally 
open, gentle, and generous; a lover, of truth and justice; 
and one who had brooded over the fine dreams of chiv- 
alry and romance, till they had robbed him of himself, 

25 and cheated his brain into a belief of their reality. There 
cannot be a greater mistake than to consider Don Quixote 
as a merely satirical work, or as a vulgar attempt to ex- 
plode "the long-forgotten order of chivalry." There 
could be no need to explode what no longer existed. Be- 

30 sides, Cervantes himself was a man of the most sanguine 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 1 5 

and enthusiastic temperament; and even through the 
crazed and battered figure of the knight, the spirit of 
chivalry shines out with undiminished luster; as if the 
author had half-designed to revive the examples of past 
ages, and once more "witch the world with noble horse- 5 
manship." Oh! if ever the moldering flame of Spanish 
liberty is destined to break forth, wrapping the tyrant 
and the tyranny in one consuming blaze, that the spark 
of generous sentiment and romantic enterprise, from 
which it must be kindled, has not been quite extinguished, 10 
will perhaps be owing to thee, Cervantes, and to thy 
Don Quixote! 

The character of Sancho is not more admirable in 
itself, than as a relief to that of the knight. The contrast 
is as picturesque and striking as that between the figures 15 
of Rosinante and Dapple. Never was there so complete 
a partie qiiarr^e: — they answer to one another at all 
points. Nothing need surpass the truth of physiognomy 
in the description of the master and man, both as to 
body and mind; the one lean and tall, the other round 20 
and short; the one heroical and courteous, the other 
selfish and servile; the one full of high-flown fancies, the 
other a bag of proverbs; the one always starting some 
romantic scheme, the other trying to keep to the safe 
side of custom and tradition. The gradual ascendancy, 25 
however, obtained by Don Quixote over Sancho, is as 
finely managed as it is characteristic. Credulity and a 
love of the marvelous are as natural to ignorance as 
selfishness and cunning. Sancho by degrees becomes a 
kind of lay-brother of the order; acquires a taste for ad- 30 



1 6 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

ventures in his own way, and is made all but an entire 
convert by the discovery of the hundred crowns in one 
of his most comfortless journeys. Towards the end, his 
regret at being forced to give up the pursuit of knight- 
5 errantry, almost equals his master's; and he seizes the 
proposal of Don Quixote for them to turn shepherds with 
the greatest avidity — still applying it in his own fashion; 
for while the Don is ingeniously torturing the names of 
his humble acquaintance into classical terminations, and 

lo contriving scenes of gallantry and song, Sancho exclaims, 
"Oh, what delicate wooden spoons shall I carve! what 
crumbs and cream shall I devour!" — forgetting, in his 
milk and fruits, the pullets and geese at Camacho's wed- 
ding. 

15 This intuitive perception of the hidden analogies of 
things, or, as it may be called, this instinct of the imagi- 
nation, is, perhaps, what stamps the character of genius 
on the productions of art more than any other circum- 
stance: for it works unconsciously, like nature, and re- 

20 ceives its impressions from a kind of inspiration. There 
is as much of this indistinct keeping and involuntary 
unity of purpose in Cervantes as in any author whatever. 
Something of the same unsettled, rambling humor ex- 
tends itself to all the subordinate parts and characters 

25 of the work. Thus we find the curate confidentially in- 
forming Don Quixote, that if he could get the ear of the 
government, he has something of considerable impor- 
tance to propose for the good of the State; and our ad- 
venturer afterwards (in the course of his peregrinations) 

30 meets with a young gentleman who is a candidate for 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 1 7 

poetical honors, with a mad lover, a forsaken damsel, a 
Mahometan lady converted to the Christian faith, etc. — 
all delineated with the same truth, wildness, and deli- 
cacy of fancy. The whole work breathes that air of 
romance, that aspiration after imaginary good, that 
indescribable longing after something more than we 
possess, that in all places and in all conditions of life, 

still prompts the eternal sigh, 



For which we wish to live, or dare to die 1 " 

The leading characters in Don Quixote are strictly in- 10 
dividuals; that is, they do not so much belong to, as form 
a class by themselves. In other words, the actions and 
manners of the chief dramatis personae do not arise out 
of the actions and manners of those around them, or the 
situation of life in which they are placed, but out of the 15 
peculiar dispositions of the persons themselves, operated 
upon by certain impulses of caprice and accident. Yet 
these impulses are so true to nature, and their operation 
so exactly described, that we net only recognize the fidel- 
ity of the representation, but recognize it with all the 20 
advantages of novelty superadded. They are in the best 
sense originals, namely, in the sense in which Nature has 
her originals. They are unlike anything we have seen 
before— may be said to be purely ideal; and yet identify 
themselves more readily with our imagination, and are 25 
retained more strongly in memory, than perhaps any 
others: they are never lost in the crowd. One test of the 
truth of this ideal painting is the number of allusions 
which Don Quixote has furnished to the whole of civi- 
Prose — 2 



1 8 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

lized Europe; that is to say, of appropriate cases and 
striking illustrations of the universal principles of our 
nature. The detached incidents and occasional descrip- 
tions of human life are more familiar and obvious; so 
5 that we have nearly the same insight here given us into 
the characters of innkeepers, barmaids, ostlers, and 
puppet showmen, that we have in Fielding. There is a 
much greater mixture, however, of the pathetic and 
sentimental with the quaint and humorous, than there 

lo ever is in Fielding. I might instance the story of the 
countryman whom Don Quixote and Sancho met in 
their doubtful search after Dulcinea, driving his mules to 
plough at break of day, and " singing the ancient ballad 
of Roncesvalles " ! The episodes, which are frequently 

15 introduced, are excellent, but have, upon the whole, 
been overrated. They derive their interest from their 
connection with the main story. We are so pleased with 
that, that we are disposed to receive pleasure from every- 
thing else. Compared, for instance, with the serious 

20 tales in Boccaccio, they are sHght and somewhat super- 
ficial. That of Marcella, the fair shepherdess, is, I 
think, the best. I shall only add, that Don Quixote was, 
at the time it was published, an entirely original work in 
its kind, and that the author claims the highest honor 

25 which can belong to one, that of being the inventor of a 
new style of writing. I have never read his Galatea, nor 
his Loves of Per sites and Sigismunda, though I have often 
meant to do it, and I hope to do so yet. Perhaps there 
is a reason lurking at the bottom of this dilatoriness: I 

30 am quite sure the reading of these works could not make 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 1 9 

me think higher of the author of Don Quixote, and it 
might, for a moment or two, make me think less. 

There is another Spanish novel, Guzman cfAljarache, 
nearly of the same age as Don Quixote, and of great 
genius, though it can hardly be ranked as a novel or a 5 
work of imagination. It is a series of strange, uncon- 
nected adventures, rather dryly told, but accompanied by 
the most severe and sarcastic commentary. The satire, 
the wit, the eloquence, and reasoning, are of the most 
potent kind: but they are didactic rather than dramatic. lo 
They would suit a homily or a pasquinade as well or 
better than a romance. Still there are in this extraor- 
dinary book occasional sketches of character and hu- 
morous descriptions, to which it would be difficult to 
produce anything superior. This work, which is hardly 15 
known in this country except by name, has the credit, 
without any reason, of being the original of Gil Bias. 
There is one incident the same, that of the unsavory 
ragout, which is served up for supper at the inn. In 
all other respects these two works are the very reverse of 20 
each other, both in their excellences and defects. — 
Lazarillo de Tormes has been more read than the Spanish 
Rogue, and is a work more readable, on this acount 
among others, that it is contained in a duodecimo in- 
stead of a folio volume. This, however, is long enough, 25 
considering that it treats of only one subject, that of 
eating, or rather the possibility of living without eating. 
Famine is here framed into an art, and feasting is ban- 
ished far hence. The hero's time and thoughts are taken 
up in a thousand shifts to procure a dinner; and that 30 



20 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

failing, in tampering with his stomach till supper time, 
when being forced to go supperless to bed, he comforts 
himself with the hopes of a breakfast, the next morning 
of which being again disappointed, he reserves his ap- 
5 petite for a luncheon, and then has to stave it off again 
by some meager excuse or other till dinner; and so on, 
by a perpetual adjournment of this necessary process, 
through the four-and-twenty hours round. The quantity 
of food proper to keep body and soul together is reduced 

10 to a minimum; and the most uninviting morsels with 
which Lazarillo meets once a week as a godsend, are pam- 
pered into the most sumptuous fare by a long course of 
inanition. The scene of this novel could be laid nowhere 
so properly as in Spain, that land of priestcraft and 

15 poverty, where hunger seems to be the ruHng passion, 
and starving the order of the day. 

Gil Bias has, next to Don Quixote, been more generally 
read and admired than any other novel; and in one sense 
deservedly so: for it is at the head of its class, though 

20 that class is very different from, and I should say in- 
ferior to the other. There is little individual character 
in Gil Bias. The author is a describer of manners, and 
not of character. He does not take the elements of hu- 
man nature, and w^ork them up into new combinations 

25 (which is the excellence of Don Quixote)', nor trace the 
peculiar and shifting shades of folly and knavery as they 
are to be found in real Hfe (like Fielding): but he takes 
off, as it were, the general, habitual impression which 
circumstances make on certain conditions of life, and 

30 molds all his characters accordingly. All the persons 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 21 

whom he introduces carry about with them the badge of 
their profession, and you see Httle more of them than 
their costume. He describes men as belonging to dis- 
tinct classes in society; not as they are in themselves, or 
with the individual differences which are always to be 5 
discovered in nature. His hero, in particular, has no 
character but that of the successive circumstances in 
which he is placed. His priests are only described as 
priests: his valets, his players, his women, his courtiers 
and his sharpers, are all aUke. Nothing can well ex- 10 
ceed the monotony of the work in this respect: — at the 
same time that nothing can exceed the truth and pre- 
cision with which the general manners of these different 
characters are preserved, nor the felicity of the particular 
traits by which their common foibles are brought out. 15 
Thus the Archbishop of Granada will remain an ever- 
lasting memento of the weakness of human vanity; and 
the account of Gil Bias's legacy, of the uncertainty of 
human expectations. This novel is also deficient in 
the fable as well as in the characters. It is not a regularly 20 
constructed story; but a series of amusing adventures 
told with equal gaiety and good sense, and in the most 
graceful style imaginable. 

It has been usual to class our own great novelists as 
imitators of one or other of these two writers. Fielding, 25 
no doubt, is more like Don Quixote than Gil Bias; Smol- 
lett is more like Gil Bias than Don Quixote; but there is 
not much resemblance in either case. Sterne's Tristram 
Shandy is a more direct instance of imitation. Richard- 
son can scarcely be called an imitator of any one; or if 30 



22 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

he is, it is of the sentimental refinement of Marivanx, or 
of the verbose gallantry of the writers of the seventeenth 
century. 
There is very little to warrant the common idea that 
5 Fielding was an imitator of Cervantes, except his own 
declaration of such an intention in the title-page of 
Joseph Andrews, the romantic turn of the character of 
Parson Adams (the only romantic character in his works), 
and the proverbial humor of Partridge, which is kept up 

lo only for a few pages. Fielding's novels are, in general, 
thoroughly his own; and they are thoroughly English. 
What they are most remarkable for, is neither sentiment, 
nor imagination, nor wit, nor even humor, though there 
is an immense deal of this last quality; but profound 

15 knowledge of human nature, at least of English nature, 
and masterly pictures of the characters of men as he saw 
them existing. This quality distinguishes all his works, 
and is shown almost equally in all of them. As a painter 
of real life, he was equal to Hogarth; as a mere observer 

20 of human nature, he was little inferior to Shakespeare, 
though without any of the genius and poetical qualities 
of his mind. His humor is less rich and laughable than 
Smollett's; his wit as often misses as hits; he has none 
of the fine pathos of Richardson or Sterne; but he has 

25 brought together a greater variety of characters in com- 
mon life, marked with more distinct peculiarities, and 
without an atom of caricature, than any other novel 
v^riter whatever. The extreme subtlety of observation 
on the springs of human conduct in ordinary characters, 

30 is only equaled by the ingenuity of contrivance in bring- 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 23 

ing those springs into play, in such a manner as to lay- 
open their smallest irregularity. The detection is always 
complete, and made with the certainty and skill of a 
philosophical experiment, and the obviousness and fa- 
miharity of a casual observation. The truth of the imi- 5 
tation is indeed so great, that it has been argued that 
Fielding must have had his materials ready-made to his 
hands, and was merely a transcriber of local manners 
and individual habits. For this conjecture, however, 
there seems to be no foundation. His representations, 10 
it is true, are local and individual; but they are not the 
less profound and conclusive. The feeling of the gen- 
eral principles of human nature operating in particular 
circumstances, is always intense, and uppermost in his 
mind; and he makes use of incident and situation only 15 
to bring out character. 

It is scarcely necessary to give any illustrations. 
Tom Jones is full of them. There is the account, for 
example, of the gratitude of the Elder BHfil to his brother, 
for assisting him to obtain the fortune of Miss Bridget 20 
Al worthy by marriage; and of the gratitude of the poor 
in his neighborhood to Alworthy himself, who had done 
so much good in the country that he had made every 
one in it his enemy. There is the account of the Latin 
dialogues between Partridge and his maid, of the as- 25 
sault made on him during one of these by Mrs. Partridge, 
and the severe bruises he patiently received on that oc- 
casion, after which the parish of Little Baddington rung 
with the story^ that the schoolmaster had killed his wife. 
There is the exquisite keeping in the character of Blifil, 30 



24 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

and the want of it in that of Jones. There is the grada- 
tion in the lovers of Molly Seagrim, the philosopher 
Square succeeding to Tom Jones, who again finds that 
he himself had succeeded to the accompHshed Will 
5 Barnes who had the first possession of her person, and 
had still possession of her heart, Jones being only the 
instrument of her vanity, as Square was of her interest. 
Then there is the discreet honesty of Black George, the 
learning of Thwackum and Square, and the profundity 

10 of Squire Western, who considered it as a physical im- 
possibility that his daughter should fall in love with Tom 
Jones. We have also that gentleman's disputes with 
his sister, and the inimitable appeal of that lady to her 
niece: "I was never so handsome as you, Sophy; yet I 

15 had something of you formerly. I was called the cruel 
Parthenissa. Kingdoms and states, as Tully Cicero says, 
undergo alteration, and so must the human form!" 
The adventure of the same lady with the highwayman, 
who robbed her of her jewels while he complimented her 

20 beauty, ought not to be passed over; nor that of Sophia 
and her muff, nor the reserved coquetry of her cousin 
Fitzpatrick, nor the description of Lady Bellaston, nor 
the modest overtures of the pretty widow Hunt, nor the 
indiscreet babblings of Mrs. Honour. The moral of 

25 this book has been objected to without much reason; 
but a more serious objection has been made to the want 
of refinement and elegance in two principal characters. 
We never feel this objection, indeed, while we are read- 
ing the book; but at other times we have something like 

30 a lurking suspicion that Jones was but an awkward 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 25 

fellow, and Sophia a pretty simpleton. I do not know 
how to account for this effect, unless it is that Fielding's 
constantly assuring us of the beauty of his hero, and the 
good sense of his heroine, at last produces a distrust of 
both. The story of Tom Jones is allowed to be unrivaled; 5 
and it is this circumstance, together with the vast variety 
of characters, that has given the History of a Foundling 
so decided a preference over Fielding's other novels. 
The characters themselves, both in Amelia and Joseph 
Andrews, are quite equal to any of those in To7n Jones. 10 
The account of Miss Matthews and Ensign Hibbert in 
the former of these, — the way in which that lady recon- 
ciles herself to the death of her father, — the inflexible 
Colonel Bath, the insipid Mrs. James, the complaisant 
Colonel Trent, the demure, sly, intriguing, equivocal 15 
Mrs. Bennet, the lord who is her seducer, and who at- 
tempts afterwards to seduce Amelia by the same me- 
chanical process of a concert ticket, a book, and the 
disguise of a greatcoat, — his little, fat, short-nosed, red- 
faced, good-humored accomplice, the keeper of the lodg- 20 
ing house, who, having no pretensions to gallantry herself, 
has a disinterested dehght in forwarding the intrigues 
and pleasures of others (to say nothing of honest At- 
kinson, the story of the miniature picture of Amelia, and 
the hashed mutton, which are in a different style), are 5 
masterpieces of description. The whole scene at the 
lodging house, the masquerade, etc., in Amelia, are equal 
in interest to the parallel scenes in Tom Jones, and even 
more refined in the knowledge of character. For in- 
stance, Mrs. Bennet is superior to Mrs. Fitzpatrick in 3° 



26 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

her own way. The uncertainty in which the event of 
her interview with her former seducer is left, is admi- 
rable. Fielding was a master of what may be called the 
double entendre of character, and surprises you no less 

5 by what he leaves in the dark (hardly known to the per- 
sons themselves) than by the unexpected discoveries he 
makes of the real traits and circumstances in a character 
with which, till then, you find you were unacquainted. 
There is nothing at all heroic, however, in the usual 

10 style of his delineations. He does not draw lofty char- 
acters or strong passions; all his persons are of the ordi- 
nary stature as to intellect, and possess little elevation of 
fancy, or energy of purpose. Perhaps, after all. Parson 
Adams is his finest character. It is equally true to nature 

15 and more ideal than any of the others. Its unsuspecting 
simphcity makes it not only more amiable, but doubly 
amusing, by gratifying the sense of superior sagacity in 
the reader. Our laughing at him does not once lessen 
our respect for him. His declaring that he would will- 

20 ingly walk ten miles to fetch his sermon on vanity, 
merely to convince Wilson of his thorough contempt of 
this vice, and his consoling himself for the loss of his 
yEschylus by suddenly recollecting that he could not read 
it if he had it, because it is dark, are among the finest 

25 touches of naivete. The night adventures at Lady 
Booby's with Beau Didapper and the amiable Slipslop 
are the most ludicrous; and that with the huntsman, 
who draws off the hounds from the poor parson because 
they would be spoiled by following vermin, the most 

30 profound. Fielding did not often repeat himself, but 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 27 

Dr. Harrison, in Amelia, may be considered as a varia- 
tion of the character of Adams; so also is Goldsmith's 
Vicar of Wakefield; and the latter part of that work, 
which sets out so delightfully, an almost entire plagia- 
rism from Wilson's account of himself, and Adams's 5 
domestic history. 

Smollett's first novel, Roderick Random, which is also 
his best, appeared about the same time as Fielding's 
Tom Jones, and yet it has a much more modern air with 
it; but this may be accounted for from the circumstance 10 
that Smollett was quite a young man at the time, whereas 
Fielding's manner must have been forrhed long before. 
The style of Roderick Random is more easy and flowing 
than that of Tom Jones; the incidents follow one another 
more rapidly (though, it must be confessed, they never 15 
come in such a throng, or are brought out with the same 
dramatic effect); the humor is broader, and as effectual; 
and there is very nearly, if not quite, an equal interest 
excited by the story. What, then, is it that gives the 
superiority to Fielding? It is the superior insight into 20 
the springs of human character, and the constant de- 
velopment of that character through every change of 
circumstance. Smollett's humor often arises from the 
situation of the persons, or the peculiarity of their ex- 
ternal appearance; as, from Roderick Random's carroty 25 
locks, which hung down over his shoulders like a pound 
of candles, or Strap's ignorance of London, and the 
blunders that follow from it. There is a tone of vul- 
garity about all his productions. The incidents fre- 
quently resemble detached anecdotes taken from a 30 



28 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

newspaper or magazine; and, like those in Gil Bias, 
might happen to a hundred other characters. He ex- 
hibits the ridiculous accidents and reverses to which 
human Ufe is Hable, not "the stuff" of which it is com- 
5 posed. He seldom probes to the quick, or penetrates 
beyond the surface; and, therefore, he leaves no stings in 
the minds of his readers, and in this respect is far less 
interesting than Fielding. His novels always enliven, 
and never tire us; we take them up with pleasure, and 

10 lay them down without any strong feeling of regret. 
We look on and laugh, as spectators of a highly amusing 
scene, without closing in with the combatants, or being 
made parties in the event. We read Roderick Random 
as an entertaining story, for the particular accidents and 

15 modes of Hfe which it describes have ceased to exist; 
but we regard Tom Jones as a real history, because the 
author never stops short of those essential principles 
which He at the bottom of all our actions, and in which 
we feel an immediate interest — intus et hi cute. Smollett 

20 excels most as the lively caricaturist : Fielding as the exact 

painter and profound metaphysician. I am far from 

maintaining that this account applies uniformly to the 

productions of these two writers; but I think that, as 

. far as they essentially differ, what I have stated is the 

25 general distinction between them. Roderick Random is 
the purest of Smollett's novels: I mean in point of style 
and description. Most of the incidents and characters 
are supposed to have been taken from the events of his 
own life; and are, therefore, truer to nature. There is 

30 a rude conception of generosity in some of his characters, 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 29 

of which Fielding seems to have been incapable, his 
amiable persons being merely good-natured. It is owing 
to this that Strap is superior to Partridge; as there is a 
heartiness and warmth of feeling in some of the scenes 
between Lieutenant Bowling and his nephew, which is 5 
beyond Fielding's power of impassioned writing. The 
whole of the scene on shipboard is a most admirable 
and striking picture, and, I imagine, very little if at all 
exaggerated, though the interest it excites is of a very 
unpleasant kind because the irritation and resistance to 10 
petty oppression can be of no avail. The picture of the 
little profligate French friar, who was Roderick's travel- 
ing companion, and of whom he always kept to the wind- 
ward is one of Smollett's most masterly sketches. — 
Peregrine Pickle is no great favorite of mine, and 15 
Launcelot Greaves was not worthy of the genius of the 
author. 

Humphry Clinker and Count Fathom are both equally 
admirable in their way. Perhaps the former is the most 
pleasant gossiping novel that was ever written; that 20 
which gives the most pleasure with the least effort to 
the reader. It is quite as amusing as going the journey 
could have been; and we have just as good an idea of 
what happened on the road as if we had been of the party. 
Humphry CHnker himself is exquisite; and his sweet- 25 
heart, Winifred Jenkins, not much behind him. Mat- 
thew Bramble, though not altogether original, is ex- 
cellently supported, and seems to have been the prototype 
of Sir Anthony Absolute in the Rivals. But Lismahago 
is the flower of the flock. His tenaciousness in argument 30 



30 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

is not so delightful as the relaxation of his logical se- 
verity, when he finds his fortune mellowing in the wintry 
smiles of Mrs. Tabitha Bramble. This is the best pre- 
served, and most severe of all Smollett's characters. 
5 The resemblance to Don Quixote is only just enough to 
make it interesting to the critical reader, without giving 
offense to anybody else. The indecency and filth in this 
novel, are what must be allowed to all Smollett's writ- 
ings. — The subject and characters in Count Fathom are, 

10 in general, exceedingly disgusting: the story is also spun 
out to a degree of tediousness in the serious and senti- 
mental parts; but there is more power of writing oc- 
casionally shown in it than in any of his works. I need 
only refer to the fine and bitter irony of the Count's 

15 address to the country of his ancestors on his landing 
in England; to the robber scene in the forest, which has 
never been surpassed; to the Parisian swindler who per- 
sonates a raw English country squire (Western is tame 
in the comparison); and to the story of the seduction in 

20 the west of England. It would be difficult to point out, 
in any author, passages written with more force and 
mastery than these. 

It is not a very difficult undertaking to class Fielding 
or Smollett; — the one as an observer of the characters 

25 of human life, the other as a describer of its various 
eccentricities. But it is by no means so easy to dispose 
of Richardson, who was neither an observer of the one 
nor a describer of the other, but who seemed to spin his 
materials entirely out of his own brain, as if there had 

30 been nothing existing in the world beyond the little 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 3 1 

room in which he sat writing. There is an artificial 
reahty about his works which is nowhere else to be met 
with. They have the romantic air of a pure fiction, with 
the Hteral minuteness of a common diary. The author 
had the strongest matter-of-fact imagination that ever 5 
existed, and wrote the oddest mixture of poetry and 
prose. He does not appear to have taken advantage of 
anything in actual nature from one end of his works to 
the other; and yet, throughout all his works, voluminous 
as they are (and this, to be sure, is one reason why they 10 
are so), he sets about describing every object and trans- 
action, as if the whole had been given in on evidence 
by an eyewitness. This kind of high finishing from 
imagination is an anomaly in the history of human genius; 
and certainly nothing so fine was ever produced by the 15 
same accumulation of minute parts. There is not the 
least distraction, the least forgetfulness of the end — 
every circumstance is made to tell. I cannot agree that 
this exactness of detail produces heaviness; on the con- 
trary, it gives an appearance of truth, and a positive 20 
interest to the story; and we listen with the same attention 
as we should to the particulars of a confidential com- 
munication. I at one time used to think some parts of 
Sir Charles Grandison rather trifling and tedious, es- 
pecially the long description of Miss Harriet Byron's 25 
wedding clothes, till I was told of two young ladies who 
had severally copied out the whole of that very descrip- 
tion for their own private gratification. After that I 
could not blame the author. 

The effect of reading this work is like an increase of 30 



32 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

kindred. You find yourself all of a sudden introduced 
into the midst of a large family, with aunts and cousins 
to the third and fourth generation, and grandmothers 
both by the father's and mother's side; and a very odd 
5 set of people they are, but people whose real existence 
and personal identity you can no more dispute than 
your own senses, for you see and hear all that they do or 
say. What is still more extraordinary, all this extreme 
elaborateness in working out the story seems to have cost 

10 the author nothing; for, it is said, that the published 
works are mere abridgments. I have heard (though 
this I suspect must be a pleasant exaggeration) that 
Sir Charles Grandison was originally written in eight- 
and-twenty volumes. 

IS Pamela is the first of Richardson's productions, and 
the very child of his brain. Taking the general idea of 
the character of a modest and beautiful country girl, 
and of the ordinary situation in which she is placed, he 
makes out all the rest, even to the smallest circumstance, 

20 by the mere force of a reasoning imagination. It would 
seem as if a step lost, would be as fatal here as in a 
mathematical demonstration. The development of the 
character is the most simple, and comes the nearest to 
nature that it can do, without being the same thing. 

25 The interest of the story increases with the dawn of un- 
derstanding and reflection in the heroine: her sentiments 
gradually expand themselves, like opening flowers. She 
writes better every time and acquires a confidence in 
herself, just as a girl would do, in writing such letters 

30 in such circumstances; and yet it is certain^ that no girl 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 33 

would write such letters in such cirumstances. What I 
mean is this: — Richardson's nature is always the nature 
of sentiment and reflection, not of impulse or situation. 
He furnishes his characters, on every occasion, with 
the presence of mind of the author. He makes them act, 5 
not as they would from the impulse of the moment, but 
as they might upon reflection, and upon a careful review 
of every motive and circumstance in their situation. 
They regularly sit down to write letters: and if the busi- 
ness of life consisted in letter writing, and was carried lo 
on by the post (like a Spanish game at chess), human 
nature would be what Richardson represents it. All 
actual objects and feelings are blunted and deadened 
by being presented through a medium which may be 
true to reason, but is false in nature. He confounds his 15 
own point of view with that of the immediate actors in 
the scene; and hence presents you with a conventional 
and factitious nature, instead of that which is real. Dr. 
Johnson seems to have preferred this truth of reflection 
to the truth of nature, when he said that there was more 20 
knowledge of the human heart in a page of Richardson, 
than in all Fielding. Fielding, however, saw more of the 
practical results, and understood the principles as well; 
but he had not the same power of speculating upon their 
possible results, and combining them in certain ideal 25 
forms of passion and imagination, which was Richard- 
son's real excellence. 

It must be observed, however, that it is this mutual 
good understanding and comparing of notes between 
the author and the persons he describes, his infinite 30 
Prose — 3 



34 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

circumspection, his exact process of ratiocination and 
calculation, which gives such an appearance of cold- 
ness and formaUty to most of his characters, — which 
makes prudes of his women and coxcombs of his men. 
5 Everything is too conscious in his works. Everything 
is distinctly brought home to the mind of the actors in 
the scene, which is a fault undoubtedly: but then, it must 
be confessed, everything is brought home in its full 
force to the mind of the reader also; and w^e feel the same 

lo interest in the story as if it were our own. Can anything 
be more beautiful or more affecting than Pamela's re- 
proaches to her "lumpish heart," when she is sent away 
from her master's at her own request; its lightness when 
she is sent for back; the joy which the conviction of the 

IS sincerity of his love diffuses in her heart, like the coming 
on of spring; the artifice of the stuff gown; the meeting 
with Lady Da vers after her marriage; and the trial scene 
with her husband ? Who ever remained insensible to the 
passion of Lady Clementina, except Sir Charles Grand- 

20 ison himself, w^ho was the object of it ? Clarissa is, how- 
ever, his masterpiece, if we except Lovelace. If she is 
fine in herself, she is still finer in his account of her. 
With that foil, her purity is dazzling indeed: and she 
who could triumph by her virtue, and the force of her 

25 love, over the regality of Lovelace's mind, his wit, his 
person, his accomplishments, and his spirit, conquers 
all hearts. I should suppose that never sympathy more 
deep or sincere was excited than by the heroine of Rich- 
ardson's romance, except by the calamities of real life. 

30 The links in this wonderful chain of interest are not more 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 35 

finely wrought, than their whole weight is overwhelming 
and irresistible. Who can forget the exquisite gradations 
of her long dying scene, or the closing of the coffin lid, 
when Miss Howe comes to take her last leave of her 
friend; or the heartbreaking reflection that Clarissa makes 5 
on what was to have been her wedding day? Well does 
a certain writer exclaim — 

" Books are a real world, both pure and good, 
Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, 
Our pastime and our happiness may grow 1 " 10 

Richardson's wit was unlike that of any other writer 
— his humor was so too. Both were the effect of intense 
activity of mind — labored, and yet completely effectual. 
I might refer to Lovelace's reception and description of 
Hickman, when he calls out Death in his ear, as the name 15 
of the person with whom Clarissa had fallen in love; and 
to the scene at the glove shop. What can be more mag- 
nificent than his enumeration of his companions — " Bel- 
ton, so pert and so pimply — Tourville, so fair and so 
foppish!" etc. In casuistry this author is quite at home; 20 
and, with a boldness greater even than his puritanical 
severity, has exhausted every topic on virtue and vice. 
There is another peculiarity in Richardson, not perhaps 
so uncommon, which is, his systematically preferring his 
most insipid characters to his finest, though both were 25 
equally his .own invention, and he must be supposed to 
have understood something of their qualities. Thus 
he preferred the little, selfish, affected, insignificant 
Miss Byron, to the divine Clementina; and again, Sir 
Charles Grandison to the nobler Lovelace. I have 3° 



36 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

nothing to say in favor of Lovelace's morality; but 
Sir Charles is the prince of coxcombs, — whose eye was 
never once taken from his own person and his own 
virtues; and there is nothing which excites so little sym- 
5 pathy as this excessive egotism. 

It remains to speak of Sterne; and I shall do it in few 
words. There is more of mannerism and affectation in 
him, and a more immediate reference to preceding au- 
thors; but his excellences, where he is excellent, are of 

10 the first order. His characters are intellectual and in- 
ventive, like Richardson's, but totally opposite in the 
execution. The one are made out by continuity, and 
patient repetition of touches; the others, by glancing 
transitions and graceful apposition. His style is equally 

15 different from Richardson's: it is at times the most rapid, 
the most happy, the most idiomatic of any that is to be 
found. It is the pure essence of English conversational 
style. His works consist only of morceaux — of brilliant 
passages. I wonder that Goldsmith, who ought to have 

20 known better, should call him ''a dull fellow." His wit 
is poignant, though artificial; and his characters (though 
the groundwork of some of them had been laid before) 
have yet invaluable original differences; and the spirit 
of the execution, the master strokes constantly thrown 

25 into them, are not to be surpassed. It is sufficient to 
name them: — Yorick, Dr. Slop, Mr. Shandy, My Uncle 
Toby, Trim, Susanna, and the Widow Wadman. In 
these he has contrived to oppose, with equal felicity and 
originality, two characters, one of pure intellect, and the 

30 other of pure good nature, in My Father and My Uncle 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 37 

Toby. There appears to have been in Sterne a vein of 
dry, sarcastic humor, and of extreme tenderness of feel- 
ing; the latter sometimes carried to affectation, as in the 
tale of Maria, and the apostrophe to the recording angel; 
but at other times pure, and without blemish. The 5 
story of Le Fevre is perhaps the finest in the English 
language. My Father's restlessness, both of body and 
mind, is inimitable. It is the model from which all those 
despicable performances against modern philosophy 
ought to have been copied, if their authors had known 10 
anything of the subject they were writing about. My 
Uncle Toby is one of the finest compliments ever paid to 
human nature. He is the most unoffending of God's 
creatures; or, as the French express it, tin tel petit hon 
homme! Of his bowling green, his sieges, and his amours, 1 5 
who would say or think anything amiss! 

It is remarkable that our four best novel writers be- 
long nearly to the same age. We also owe to the same 
period (the reign of George II) the inimitable Hogarth, 
and some of our best writers of the middle style of comedy. 20 
If I were called upon to account for this coincidence, I 
should waive the consideration of mere general causes, 
and ascribe it at once to the establishment of the Protes- 
tant ascendancy, and the succession of the House of 
Hanover. These great events appear to have given a 25 
more popular turn to our literature and genius, as well 
as to our government. It was found high time that the 
people should be represented in books as well as in 
Parliament. They wisl.jd to see some account of them- 
selves in what they read; and not to be confined always 30 



38 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

to the vices, the miseries, and frivolities of the great. 
Our domestic tragedy, and our earliest periodical works, 
appeared a little before the same period. In despotic 
countries, human nature is not of sufficient importance 
5 to be studied or described. The canaille are objects 
rather of disgust than curiosity; and there are no middle 
classes. The works of Racine and Moliere are either 
imitations of the verbiage of the court, before which 
they were represented, or fanciful caricatures of the 

10 manners of the lowest of the people. But in the period 
of our history in question, a security of person and 
property, and a freedom of opinion had been established, 
which made every man feel of some consequence to 
himself, and appear an object of some curiosity to his 

15 neighbors: our manners became more domesticated; 
there was a general spirit of sturdiness and independence, 
which made the English character more truly English 
than perhaps at any other period — that is, more tenacious 
of its own opinions and purposes. The whole surface 

20 of society appeared cut out into square enclosures and 
sharp angles, which extended to the dresses of the time, 
their gravel walks and clipped hedges. Each individual 
had a certain ground plot of his own to cultivate his par- 
ticular humors in, and let them shoot out at pleasure; 

25 and a most plentiful crop they have produced accord- 
ingly. The reign of George II was, in a word, the age 
of hobby-horses: but, since that period, things have taken 
a different turn. 
His present Majesty (God save the mark!) during 

30 almost the whole of his reign, has been constantly 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 39 

mounted on a great war-horse; and has fai'rl}^ driven 
all competitors out of the field. Instead of minding our 
own affairs, or laughing at each other, the eyes of all his 
faithful subjects have been fixed on the career of the 
sovereign, and all hearts anxious for the safety of his 5 
person and government. Our pens and our swords have 
been aUke drawn in their defense; and the returns of 
killed and wounded, the manufacture cf newspapers and 
parliamentary speeches, have exceeded all former ex- 
ample. If we have had a little of the blessings of peace, 10 
we have had enough of the glories and calamities of war. 
His Majesty has indeed contrived to keep alive the 
greatest public interest ever known, by his determined 
manner of riding his hobby for half a century together, 
with the aristocracy, the democracy, the clergy, the 15 
landed and moneyed interest, and the rabble, in full cry 
after him; — and at the end of his career, most happily 
and unexpectedly succeeded, c midst empires lost and 
won, kingdoms overturned and created, and the destruc- 
tion of an incredible number of lives, in restoring the di- 20 
vine right oj kings, and thus preventing any future abuse 
of the example which seated his family on the throne! 
It is not to be wondered at, if amidst the tumults of 
events crowded into this period, our literature has par- 
taken of the disorder of the time; if our prose has run 25 
mad, and our poetry grown childish. Among those per- 
sons who "have kept the even tenor of their way," the 
author of Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla, must be al- 
lowed to hold a distinguished place. ^ Mrd. Radcliffe's 

1 The Fool of Quality, David Simple, and Sydney Biddulph, 30 



40 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

"enchantments drear," and moldering castles, derived 
part of their interest, no doubt, from the supposed totter- 
ing state of all old structures at the time; and Mrs. Inch- 
bald's Nature and Art would scarcely have had the same 
5 popularity, but that it fell in (as to its two main charac- 
ters) with the prevailing prejudice of the moment, that 
judges and bishops were not invariably pure abstractions 
of justice and piety. Miss Edgeworth's Tales, again 
(with the exception of Castle Rack-rent, which is a gen- 

lo uine, unsophisticated, national portrait), are a kind of 
pedantic, pragmatical common sense, tinctured with the 
pertness and pretensions of the paradoxes to which they 
are so self-complacently opposed. Madame D'Arblay is, 
on the contrary, quite of the old school, a mere common 

15 observer of manners, and also a very woman. It is this 
last circumstance which forms the peculiarity of her 
writings, and distinguishes them from those master- 
pieces which I have before mentioned. She is a quick, 
lively, and accurate observer of persons and things; but 

20 she always looks at them with a consciousness of her sex, 
and in that point of view in which it is the particular 
business and interest of women to observe them. There 
is little in her works of passion or character, or even m.an- 
ners, in the most extended sense of the word, as implying 

25 the sum total of our habits and pursuits; her jorte is in 
describing the absurdities and affectations of external 
behavior, or the manners of people in company. Her 

written about the middle of the last century, belong to the ancient 
regime of novel writing. Of the Vicar of Wakefield I have at- 
30 tempted a character elsewhere. 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 4 1 

characters, which are ingenious caricatures, are, no 
doubt, distinctly marked, and well kept up; but they are 
slightly shaded, and exceedingly uniform. Her heroes 
and heroines, almost all of them, depend on the stock 
of a single phrase or sentiment, and have certain mottoes 5 
or devices by which they may always be known. They 
form such characters as people might be supposed to 
assume for a night at a masquerade. She presents not 
the whole-length figure, nor even the face, but some 
prominent feature. In one of her novels, for example, a 10 
lady appears regularly every ten pages, to get a lesson 
in music for nothing. She never appears for any other 
purpose; this is all you know of her; and in this the whole 
wit and humor of the character consists. Meadows is 
the same, who has always the cue of being tired, without 15 
any other idea. It has been said of Shakespeare, that 
you may always assign his speeches to the proper char- 
acters; and you may infalhbly do the same thing with 
Madame D'Arblay's, for they always say the same 
thing. The Braughtons are the best. Mr. Smith is an 20 
exquisite city portrait. Evelina is also her best novel, 
because it is the shortest; that is, it has all the liveliness 
in the sketches of character, and smartness of comic 
dialogue and repartee, without the tediousness of the 
story, and endless affectation of sentiment which dis- 25 
figures the others. 

Women, in general, have a quicker perception of any 
oddity or singularity of character than men, and are more 
alive to every absurdity which arises from a violation 
of the rules of society, or a deviation from established 30 



42 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

custom. This partly arises from the restraints on their 
own behavior, which turn their attention constantly 
on the subject, and partly from other causes. The sur- 
face of their minds, Hke that of their bodies, seems of a 
5 finer texture than ours; more soft, and susceptible of 
immediate impulses. They have less muscular strength, 
less power of continued voluntary attention, of reason, 
passion, and imagination; but they are more easily im- 
pressed with whatever appeals to their senses or habitual 

lo prejudices. The intuitive perception of their minds is 
less disturbed by any abstruse reasonings on causes or 
consequences. They learn the idiom of character and 
manners, as they acquire that of language, by rote, 
without troubling themselves about the principles. Their 

15 observation is not the less accurate on that account, as 
far as it goes, for it has been well said that "there is 
nothing so true as habit." 

There is little other power in Madame D'Arblay's 
novels than that of -immediate observation; her char- 

20 acters, whether of refinement or vulgarity, are equally 
superficial and confined. The whole is a question of 
form, whether that form is adhered to or infringed upon. 
It is this circumstance which takes away dignity and in- 
terest from her story and sentiments, and makes the one 

25 so teasing and tedious, and the other so insipid. The 
difficulties in which she involves her heroines are too 
much "Female Difficulties"; they are difficulties created 
out of nothing. The author appears to have no other 
idea of refinement than.it is the reverse of vulgarity; but 

30 the reverse of \'ulgarity is fastidiousness and affectation. 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 43 

There is a true and a false delicacy. Because a vulgar 
country Miss would answer "yes" to a proposal of 
marriage in the first page, Madame D'Arblay makes it 
a proof of an excess of refinement, and an indispensable 
point of etiquette in her young ladies to postpone the 5 
answer to the end of five volumes, without the smallest 
reason for their doing so, and with every reason to the 
contrary. The reader is led every moment to expect a 
denouement, and is as often disappointed on some trifling 
pretext. The whole artifice of her fable consists in com- 10 
ing to no conclusion. Her ladies "sta^d so upon the 
order of their going," that they do not go at all. They 
will not abate an ace of their punctilio in any circum- 
stances or on any emergency. They would consider it 
as quite indecorous to run downstairs though the house 15 
were in flames, or to move an inch off the pavement 
though a scaffolding was falling. She has formed to 
herself an abstract idea of perfection in common be- 
havior, which is quite as romantic and impracticable as 
any other idea of the sort; and the consequence has nat- 20 
urally been that she makes her heroines commit the 
greatest improprieties and absurdities in order to avoid 
the smallest. In opposition to a maxim in philosophy, 
they constantly act from the weakest motive, or rather 
from pure contradiction. The whole tissue of the fable 25 
is, in general, more wild and chimerical than anything 
in Don Quixote, without the poetical truth or elevation. 
Madame D'Arblay has woven a web of difficulties for 
her heroines, something like the green silken threads in 
which the shepherdesses entangled the steed of Cer- 30 



44 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

vantes' hero, who swore, in his fine enthusiastic way, 
that he would sooner cut his passage to another world 
than disturb the least of those beautiful meshes. To 
mention the most painful instance — the Wanderer, in 

5 her last novel, raises obstacles lighter than " the gossamer 
that idles in the wanton summer air," into insurmount- 
able barriers; and trifles with those that arise out of com- 
mon sense, reason, and necessity. Her conduct is not 
to be accounted for directly out of the circumstances in 

lo which she is placed, but out of some factitious and mis- 
placed refinement on them. It is a perpetual game at 
cross-purposes. There being a plain and strong motive 
why she should pursue any course of action, is a suffi- 
cient reason for her to avoid it, and the perversity of her 

15 conduct is in proportion to its levity — as the lightness 
of the feather baffies the force of the impulse that is 
given to it, and the slightest breath of air turns it back 
on the hand from which it is thrown. We can hardly 
consider this as the perfection of the female character! 

20 I must say I like Mrs. Radchffe's romances better, and 
think of them oftener; and even when I do not, part of 
the impression with which I survey the full-orbed moon 
shining in the blue expanse of heaven, or hear the wind 
sighing through autumnal leaves, or walk under the 

25 echoing archways of a Gothic ruin, is owing to a repeated 
perusal of the Romance of the Forest, and the Mysteries 
of Udolpho. Her descriptions of scenery, indeed, are 
vague and wordy to the last degree; they are neither like 
Salvator nor Claude, nor nature nor art; and she dwells 

30 on the effects of moonlight till we are sometimes weary 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 45 

of them; her characters are insipid, the shadows of a 
shade, continued on, under different names, through 
all her novels; her story comes to nothing. But in har- 
rowing up the soul with imaginary horrors, and making 
the flesh creep, and the nerves thrill with fond hopes and 5 
fears, she is unrivaled among her fair countrywomen. 
Her great power lies in describing the indefinable, and 
embodying a phantom. She makes her readers twice 
children; and from the dim and shadowy veil which she 
draws over the objects of her fancy, forces us to believe 10 
all that is strange, and next to impossible, of their myste- 
rious agency; whether it is the sound of the lover's lute 
borne o'er the distant waters along the winding shores 
of Provence, recalling with its magic breath, some long- 
lost friendship or some hopeless love; or the full choir of 15 
the cloistered monks, chanting their midnight orgies; 
or the lonely voice of an unhappy sister in her pensive 
cell, like angels' whispered music; or the deep sigh that 
steals from a dungeon on the startled ear; or the dim 
apparition of ghastly features; or the face of an assassin 20 
hid beneath a monk's cowl; or the robber gliding through 
the twilight gloom of the forest. All the fascination that 
links the world of passion to the world unknown is hers, 
and she plays with it at her pleasure; she has all the 
poetry of romance, all that is obcure, visionary, and ob- 25 
jectless in the imagination. It seems that the simple 
notes of Clara's lute, which so delighted her youthful 
heart, still echo among the rocks and mountains of the Va- 
lois; the mellow tones of the minstrel's songs still mingle 
with the noise of the dasrhing oar and the rippling of the 30 



46 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

silver waves of the Mediterranean; the voice of Agnes is 
heard from the haunted tower, and Schedoni's form still 
stalks through the frowning ruins of Palinzi. The great- 
est treat, however, which Mrs. Radcliffe's pen has provided 
5 for the lovers of the marvelous and terrible is the Pro- 
vencal tale which Ludovico reads in the Castle of Udolpho 
as the lights are beginning to burn blue, and just before 
the faces appear from behind the tapestry that carry 
him off, and we hear no more of him. This tale is of a 

10 knight, who being engaged in a dance at some high 
festival of old romance, was summoned out by another 
knight clad in complete steel; and being solemnly ad- 
jured to follow him into the mazes of the neighboring 
wood, his conductor brought him at length to a hollow 

15 glade in the thickest part, where he pointed to the mur- 
dered corse of another knight, and hfting up his beaver 
showed him by the gleam of moonlight which fell on it, 
that it had the face of his specter guide! The dramatic 
power in the character of Schedoni, the Italian monk, 

20 has been much admired and praised; but the effect does 
not depend upon the character, but the situations; not 
upon the figure, but upon the background. The Castle 
of Otranto (which is supposed to have led the way to this 
style of writing) is, to my notion, dry, meager, and with- 

25 out effect. It is done upon false principles of taste. The 
great hand and arm which are thrust into the courtyard, 
and remain there all day long, are the pasteboard ma- 
chinery of a pantomime; they shock the senses, and have 
no purchase upon the imagination. They are a matter- 

30 of-fact impossibility; a fixture, and no longer a phantom. 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 47 

Quod sic mihi ostendis, incredidus odi. By realizing the 
chimeras of ignorance and fear, begot upon shadows and 
dim Ukenesses, we take away the very grounds of credu- 
Uty and superstition; and, as in other cases, by facing 
out the imposture betray the secret to the contempt 5 
and laughter of the spectators. The Recess, and the 
Old English Baron, are also "dismal treatises," but with 
little in them "at which our fell of hair is life to rouse 
and stir as life were in it." They are dull and prosing, 
without the spirit of fiction or the air of tradition to 10 
make them interesting. After Mrs. Radcliffe, Monk 
Lewis was the greatest master of the art of freezing the 
blood. The robber scene in the Monk is only inferior 
to that in Count Fathom, and perfectly new in the cir- 
cumstances and cast of the characters. Some of his 15 
descriptions are chargeable with unpardonable gross- 
ness, but the pieces of poetry interspersed in this far- 
famed novel, such as the fight of Roncesvalles and the 
Exile, in particular, have a romantic and delightful har- 
mony, such as might be chanted by the moonlight pil- 20 
grim, or might lull the dreaming mariner on summer seas. 
If Mrs. Radcliffe touched the trembling chords of the 
imagination, making wild music there, Mrs. Inchbald 
has no less power over the springs of the heart. She 
not only moves the affections but melts us into "all the 25 
luxury of woe." Her Nature and Art is one of the most 
pathetic and interesting stories in the world. It is, in- 
deed, too much so; or the distress is too naked, and the 
situations hardly to be borne with patience. I think 
nothing, however, can exceed in delicacy and beauty the 30 



48 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

account of the love letter which the poor girl, who is the 
subject of the story, receives from her lover, and which 
she is a fortnight in speUing out, sooner than show it to 
any one else; nor the dreadful catastrophe of the last fatal 
5 scene, in which the same poor creature, as her former 
seducer, now become her judge, is about to pronounce 
sentence of death upon her, cries out in agony — " Oh, 
not from you!" The effect of this novel upon the feel- 
ings, is not only of the most distressing, but withering 

lo kind. It blights the sentiments, and haunts the memory. 
The Simple Story is not much better in this respect : the 
gloom, however, which hangs over it is of a more fixed 
and tender kind: we are not now lifted to ecstasy, only to 
be plunged in madness; and besides the sweetness and 

15 dignity of some of the characters, there are redeeming 
traits, retrospective glances on the course of human life, 
which brighten the backward stream, and smile in hope 
or patience to the last. Such is the account of Sand- 
ford, her stern and inflexible adviser, sitting by the bed- 

20 side of Miss Milner, and comforting her in her dying 
moments; thus softening the worst pang of human na- 
ture, and reconciling us to the best, but not most shin- 
ing virtues in human character. The conclusion of 
Nature and Art, on the contrary, is a scene of heartless 

25 desolation, which must effectually deter any one from 
ever reading the book twice. Mrs. Inchbald is an in- 
stance to confute the assertion of Rousseau, that women 
fail whenever they attempt to describe the passion of love. 
I shall conclude this Lecture, by saying a few words 

30 of the author of Caleb Williams, and the author of 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 49 

Waverley. I shall speak of the last first. In knowledge, 
in variety, in facility, in truth of painting, in costume and 
scenery, in freshness of subject, and in untired interest, 
in glancing lights and the graces of a style passing at 
will "from grave to gay, from lively to severe," at once 5 
romantic and familiar, having the utmost force of imi- 
tation and apparent freedom of invention; these novels 
have the highest claims to admiration. What lack they 
yet ? The author has all power given him from without — 
he has not, perhaps, an equal power from within. The 10 
intensity of the feeling is not equal to the distinctness of 
the imagery. He sits like a magician in his cell, and con- 
jures up all shapes and sights to the view; and with a 
little variation we might apply to him what Spenser 
says of Fancy: — 15 

" His chamber was dispainted all within 

With sundry colors, in the which were writ 

Infinite shapes of things dispersed thin; 

Some such as in the world were never yet ; 

Some daily seene and knowen by their names, 20 

Such as in idle fantasies do flit ; 

Infernal hags, centaurs, fiends, hippodames, 

Apes, lions, eagles, owls, fools, lovers, children, dames." 

In the midst of all this phantasmagoria, the author him- 
self never appears to take part with his characters, to 25 
prompt our affection to the good, or sharpen our an- 
tipathy to the bad. It is the perfection of art to conceal 
art; and this is here done so completely, that while it 
adds to our pleasure in the work, it seems to take away 
from the merit of the author. As he does not thrust 30 
himself forward in the foreground, he loses the credit 
Prose — 4 



50 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

of the performance. The copies are so true to nature, 
that they appear Hke tapestry figures taken off by the 
pattern; the obvious patchwork of tradition and history. 
His characters are transplanted at once from their na- 
5 tive soil to the page which we are reading, without any 
traces of their having passed through the hot bed of the 
author's genius or vanity. He leaves them as he found 
them; but this is doing wonders. The Laird and the 
Bailie of Bradwardine, the idiot rhymer, David Gel- 

lo latley, Miss Rose Bradwardine, and Miss Flora Mac- 
Ivor, her brother the Highland Jacobite chieftain, Vich 
Ian Vohr, the Highland rover, Donald Bean Lean, and 
the worthy page Galium Beg, Bothwell and Balfour of 
Burley, Claverhouse and Macbriar, Elshie the Black 

15 Dwarf, and the Red Reever of Westburn Flat, Hobbie 
and Grace Armstrong, Ellangowan and Dominie Samp- 
son, Dirk Hatteraick and Meg Merrilies, are at present 
"familiar in our mouths as household names," and 
whether they are actual persons or creations of the poet's 

20 pen, is an impertinent inquiry. The picturesque and 
local scenery is as fresh as the lichen on the rock; the 
characters are a part of the scenery. If they are put in 
action, it is a moving picture: if they speak, we hear their 
dialect and the tones of their voice. If the humor is 

25 made out by dialect, the character by the dress, the in- 
terest by the facts and documents in the author's posses- 
sion, we have no right to complain, if it is made out; 
but sometimes it hardly is, and then we have a right to 
say so. For instance, in the Tales of my Landlord, Canny 

30 Elshie is not in himself so formidable or petrific a person 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 5 1 

as the real Black Dwarf, called David Ritchie, nor are 
his acts or sayings so staggering to the imagination. 
Again, the first introduction of this extraordinary per- 
sonage, groping about among the hoary twilight ruins 
of the Witch of Micklestane Moor and her Grey Geese, 5 
is as full of preternatural power and bewildering effect 
(according to the tradition of the country) as can be; 
while the last decisive scene, where the Dwarf, in his 
resumed character of Sir Edward Mauley, comes from 
the tomb in the Chapel, to prevent the forced marriage 10 
of the daughter of his former betrothed mistress with 
the man she abhors, is altogether powerless and tame. 
No situation could be imagined more finely calculated 
to call forth an author's powers of imagination and 
passion; but nothing is done. The assembly is dis- 15 
persed under circumstances of the strongest natural 
feeling, and the most appalling preternatural appear- 
ances, just as if the effect had been produced by a peace 
officer entering for the same purpose. These instances 
of a falling off are, however, rare; and if this author 20 
should not be supposed by fastidious critics to have 
original genius in the highest degree, he has other quali- 
ties which supply its place so well, his materials are so 
rich and varied, and he uses them so lavishly, that the 
reader is no loser by the exchange. We are not in fear 25 
that he should publish another novel; we are under no 
apprehension of his exhausting himself, for he has shown 
that he is inexhaustible. 

Whoever else is, it is pretty clear that the author of 
Caleb Williams and St, Leon is not the author of Waverley. 30 



52 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Nothing can be more distinct or excellent in their several 
ways than these two writers. If the one owes almost 
everything to external observation and traditional char- 
acter, the other owes everything to internal conception 

5 and contemplation of the possible workings of the human 
mind. There is little knowledge of the world, little 
variety, neither an eye for the picturesque, nor a talent 
for the humorous in Caleb Williams for instance, but 
you cannot doubt for a moment of the originahty of the 

10 work and the force of the conception. The impression 
made upon the reader is the exact measure of the strength 
of the author's genius. For the effect, both in Caleb 
Williams and St. Leon, is entirely made out, neither by 
facts, nor dates, by black letter or magazine learning, 

15 by transcript or record, but by intense and patient study 
of the human heart, and by an imagination projecting 
itself into certain situations, and capable of working up 
its imaginary feelings to the height of reality. The au- 
thor launches into the ideal world, and must sustain 

20 himself and the reader there by the mere force of imagi- 
nation. The sense of power in the writer thus adds to 
the interest of the subject. — The character of Falkland 
is a sort of apotheosis of the love of fame. The gay, 
the gallant Falkland lives only in the good opinion of 

25 good men; for this he adorns his soul with virtue and 
tarnishes it with crime; he Hves only for this, and dies 
as he loses it. He is a lover of virtue but a worshiper 
of fame. Stung to madness by a brutal insult, he avenges 
himself by a crime of the deepest dye, and the remorse 

30 of his conscience and the stain upon his honor prey 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 53 

upon his peace and reason ever after. It was into the 
mouth of such a character that a modern poet has well 
put the words, 

'• Action is momentary, 

The motion of a muscle, this way or that ; " 5 

Suffering is long, obscure, and infinite." 

In the conflict of his feelings he is worn to a skeleton, 
wasted to a shadow. But he endures this living death 
to watch over his undying reputation, and to preserve 
his name unsullied and free from suspicion. But he is 10 
at last disappointed in this his darling object, by the very 
means he takes to secure it, and by harassing and goad- 
ing Caleb Wilhams (whose insatiable, incessant curiosity 
had wormed itself into his confidence) to a state of des- 
peration, by employing every sort of persecution, and 15 
by trying to hunt him from society Hke an infection, 
makes him turn upon him, and betray the inmost secret 
of his soul. The last moments of Falkland are indeed 
sublime: the spark of life and the hope of imperishable 
renown are extinguished in him together; and bending 20 
his last look of forgiveness on his victim and destroyer, 
he dies a martyr to fame, but a confessor at the shrine 
of virtue! The reaction and play of these two characters 
into each other's hands (like Othello and lago) is inim- 
itably well managed, and on a par with anything in the 25 
dramatic art; but Falkland is the hero of the story, 
Caleb Williams is only the instrument of it. This novel 
is utterly unlike anything else that ever was written, and 
is one of the most original as well as powerful produc- 
tions in the EngHsh language. St. Leon is not equal to 30 



54 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

it in the plot and groundwork, though perhaps superior 
in the execution. In the one Mr. Godwin has hit upon 
the extreme point of the perfectly natural and perfectly 
new; in the other he enters into the preternatural world, 
5 and comes nearer to the w^orld of commonplace. Still 
the character is of the same exalted intellectual kind. 
As the ruling passion of the one was the love of fame, 
so in the other the sole business of life is thought. Raised 
by the fatal discovery of fhe philosopher's stone above 

lo mortality, he is cut off from all participation with its 
pleasures. He is a limb torn from society. In possession 
of eternal youth and beauty, he can feel no love; sur- 
rounded, tantalized, tormented with riches, he can do 
no good. The races of men pass before him as in a 

IS speculum; but he is attached to them by no common tie 
of sympathy or suffering. He is thrown back into him- 
self and his own thoughts. He lives in the solitude of 
his own breast, — without wife or child, or friend, or 
enemy in the world. His is the solitude of the soul, — 

20 not of woods, or seas, or mountains, — but the desert of 
society, the waste and desolation of the heart. He is 
himself alone. His existence is purely contemplative, 
and is therefore intolerable to one who has felt the rap- 
ture of affection or the anguish of woe. The contrast 

25 between the enthusiastic eagerness of human pursuits 
and their blank disappointment, was never, perhaps, 
more finely portrayed than in this novel. Marguerite, 
the wife of St. Leon, is an instance of pure and disin- 
terested affection in one of the noblest of her sex. It is 

30 not improbable that the author found the model of this 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 55 

character in nature. — Of Mandeville, I shall say only one 
word. It appears to me to be a falling off in the subject, 
not in the ability. The style and declamation are even 
more powerful than ever. But unless an author sur- 
passes himself, and surprises the public as much the 5 
fourth or fifth time as he did the first, he is said to fall 
off, because there is not the same stimulus of novelty. 
A great deal is here made out of nothing, or out of a 
very disagreeable subject. I cannot agree that the story 
is out of nature. The feeling is very common indeed; 10 
though carried to an unusual and improbable excess, or 
to one with which from the individuality and minuteness 
of the circumstances, we cannot readily sympathize. 

It is rare that a philosopher is a writer of romances. 
The union of the two characters in this author is a sort 15 
of phenomenon in the history of letters; for I cannot but 
consider the author of Political Justice as a philosophical 
reasoner of no ordinary stamp or pretensions. That 
work, whatever its defects may be, is distinguished by 
the most acute and severe logic, and by the utmost bold- 20 
ness of thinking, founded on a love and conviction cf 
truth. It is a system of ethics, and one that, though I 
think it erroneous myself, is built on following up into 
its fair consequences, a very common and acknowledged 
principle, that abstract reason and general utility are 25 
the only test and standard of moral rectitude. If this 
principle is true, then the system is true: but I think that 
Mr. Godwin's book has done more than anything else 
to overturn the sufficiency of this principle by abstract- 
ing, in a strict metaphysical process, the influence of 30 



56 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

reason or the understanding in moral questions and re- 
lations from that of habit, sense, association, local and 
personal attachment, natural affection, etc.; and by 
thus making it appear how necessary the latter are to our 
5 limited, imperfect, and mixed being, how impossible 
the former as an exclusive guide of action, unless man 
were, or were capable of becoming, a purely intellectual 
being. Reason is no doubt one faculty of the human 
mind, and the chief gift of Providence to man; but it 

10 must itself be subject to and modified by other instincts 
and principles, because it is not the only one. This work 
then, even supposing it to be false, is invaluable, as 
demonstrating an important truth by the rediictio ad 
ahsurdiim; or it is an experimentimi crucis in one of the 

15 grand and trying questions of moral philosophy. — In 
delineating the character and feelings of the hermetic 
philosopher St. Leon, perhaps the author had not far 
to go from those of a speculative philosophical Recluse. 
He who deals in the secrets of magic, or in the secrets 

20 of the human mind, is too often looked upon with jealous 
eyes by the world, which is no great conjurer; he who 
pours out his intellectual wealth into the lap of the pub- 
lic, is hated by those who cannot understand how he 
came by it; he who thinks beyond his age, cannot ex- 

25 pect the feelings of his contemporaries to go along with 
him; he whose mind is of no age or country, is seldom 
properly recognized during his lifetime, and must wait, 
in order to have justice done him, for the late but last- 
ing award of posterity: — "Where his treasure is, there 

30 his heart is also." 



THOMAS CARLYLE 

[Thomas Carlyle was born in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, 
Scotland, in 1795. ^^^ ^^^^ forty years of his life were spent in 
his native land, where he reached maturity through great trials 
and spiritual struggles. After finishing his education at the 
University of Edinburgh, he began work as a teacher but soon 
gave it up to make his way in literature. For some years he was 
occupied with translations from the German which, though fail- 
ures financially, brought him to the attention of the magazine 
editors. In 1827, his first critical essa.y, /cafi Paid Richter^ ap- 
peared in the Edmbw-gh Review. There followed in various 
periodicals many other essays, among which were Burns (1828), 
Goethe (1828), and Voltaire (1829). In 1833 Sartor Resartushe- 
gan to appear in Eraser's Magazine. The year after, Carlyle 
moved to London, where he passed the remainder of his life in 
severe literary labor. The French Revohition (1837) fixed his 
reputation as a writer. His other works are: Chartism {\^y^)\ 
Heroes and Hero worship { 1841 ) ; Past and Present (1843) ! Crom- 
well (1845); Latter- Day Pamphlets (1850) ; Life of John Sterling 
(1851) ; History of Frederick the Great (1858-1865). Carlyle 
died in 1881.] 

The intellectual and moral affinity between Johnson 
and Carlyle was manifold and intimate. Like Johnson, 
Carlyle was a stoical moralist and a vehement hater of 
cant and sham. Johnson delighted in the study of 
human nature, and Carlyle found his greatest pleasure 
and profit in biography. Both had an intense curiosity 
in men of achievement and both believed that a great 
man could turn his talents to any account. One was as 
stubborn a champion of veracity, as brave in defense of 
truth, as the other; and the fundamental pohtical opin- 

57 



58 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

ions of Johnson were those of Carlyle. In temperament 
also, in lifelong melancholy, in crabbed indifference to 
the fine arts, and in profound reverence of soul, both 
men were singularly alike. Carlyle discovers in John- 
son "a deep lyric tone;" others have felt that this is pre- 
cisely the quality most characteristic of Carlyle. 

Because of this close spiritual kinship Carlyle, after 
Boswell, is the most inspired interpreter of Johnson. 
His essay merits the praise of Fitzgerald, who thought 
that Johnson was judged "for good and all." It is the 
more worthy of praise since it so vigorously and so justly 
assails the infamous paradox launched by Macaulay that 
Boswell was the best biographer in the world because he 
was a great fool. Carlyle states Boswell's case with 
blunt directness. Here is a man who " has provided us 
a greater pleasure than any other individual," yet "no 
written or spoken eulogy of James Boswell anywhere 
exists." If Carlyle's eulogy overleaps itself and falls on 
the other side, it at least deserves the praise of being the 
first serious recognition of the unique greatness of John- 
son's biographer; and as such it is a notable achievement 
in hterary criticism. 

Carlyle's plan of treatment in the present essay is 
typical of his general critical method. The critic's prob- 
lem, he says, is to put himself in " Johnson's place; and 
so, in the full sense of the term, understand him, his say- 
ings and doings." The subject must be approached, 
not from without, as Macaulay had approached it, but 
from within. The lives of both Johnson and Boswell, 
therefore, are subjected to a careful analysis and the re- 
sults of this analysis are used to explain their work. 
All of the elements in Boswell's character, for example, 
are reducible to hero-worship. Gifted with reverence, 
he wrote the greatest book of the eighteenth century. 
Endowed with the virtues of "devout Discipleship," he 
evoked the dead past and made it live anew and forever. 



THOMAS CARLYLE 59 

Examined in the same way Johnson is seen to be a hero 
and hence a priest. But "how, in what spirit; under 
what shape?" asks Carlyle. The form of the question 
suggests the subjectivity of his method. That is to say, 
he is not first of all interested in the visible Samuel John- 
son with all his grotesque eccentricities, but in the in- 
visible soul of the man with its power to fight and win 
spiritual battles. As Carlyle understood him, Johnson 
was not merely a coarse, hulking, bodily shape, but a 
brave, militant spirit; he was an Ariel even if incased in 
the rude form of a Caliban. When he reached man- 
hood he found himself in a chaotic world in which lit- 
erature, religion, politics, and all human affairs were 
drifting hither and thither. Into this turbulent vortex 
Johnson was compelled to plunge, to resist as best he 
could the advancing tide of atheism and Whiggism, up- 
holding the old, the orthodox, and the established. John- 
son had courage to do this because he had heard the 
"transcendental voice of duty, the essence of all Re- 
ligion." The introductory question, therefore, is an- 
swered by calling Johnson a priest: "the true spiritual 
Edifier and Soul's Father of all England was — Samuel 
Johnson." 

This interpretation of the life suggests the true ex- 
planation of the work. In that time of transition John- 
son was a preacher whose text was Toryism. He taught 
the lesson of standing still; he resisted innovation. Here 
again the critic brings into use his subjective inquiry; 
by "what movement," he asks, was it that "Johnson 
realized such a life-work for hirnself and others ? " John- 
son did his work, fulfilled his mission, Carlyle holds, 
because of certain moral and intellectual quahties, — 
valor, truthfulness, honesty, and affectionateness (both 
as courtesy and as prejudice). These virtues made him 
a true product of England, the " John Bull of Spiritual 
Europe." 



6o NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

It is evident from this short summary that what in- 
terested Carlyle, first and last, were the men, Boswell 
and Johnson, — their moral characters, their doings, their 
manner of deportment. Little attention is paid to their 
Hterary characters. In the case of Johnson this omission 
is not serious, for the great Cham owes his immortality 
not to his Idlers, his Ramblers^ or even his Lives, but to 
his immensely fascinating personality which the inspired 
work of Boswell has preserved for all time. But the 
briUiant craftsmanship of Boswell is faintly recognized 
by Carlyle. The first biographer in English letters was 
neither the unqualified fool of Macaulay's portrait, nor 
the martyr-hero of Carlyle's; he was something of a fool, 
something of a hero-worshiper, but he was also a 
literary artist who knew perfectly well the richness of his 
material and who shaped it in accordance with the aims 
of a supremely self-conscious purpose. 

Carlyle's style, except in its later manifestations, is 
well exemplified in the present essay. It shows in the 
first place what was for Carlyle a matter of primary 
importance, — unity of design. Section and paragraph 
have their proper places in an order so articulate, so 
purposeful, as to illustrate what Pater calls "mind" in 
style. Carlyle took infinite trouble to give all his work 
a vital wholeness, to mold and shape it according to 
some central plan. He wrote only after all his ideas were 
thoroughly fused in his own mind so that their relation 
became not adventitious but inevitable. All his writings, 
from the earliest critical essay to the massive history of 
Frederick, in this respect are undeniably artistic. The 
present essay is typical in other respects also. The 
"rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery 
poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy terms," mentioned in 
the Sartor as characteristic of that work, appear on every 
page and lift the piece above the level of pedestrian prose. 
It is a style in truth possessing the passion and the con- 



boswell's life or johnson 6i 

creteness of serious poetry, two characteristics which 
proclaim the essay rather a lyrical panegyric sung by a 
latter-day prophet than a sober interpretation delivered 
by an even-handed critic. 



boswell's life of JOHNSON 

iEsop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has 
been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I 
do raise! Yet which of us, in his w^ay, has not some- 
times been guilty of the like? Nay, so foolish are men, 
they often, standing at ease and as spectators on the 5 
highway, will volunteer to exclaim of the Fly (not being 
tempted to it, as he was) exactly to the same purport: 
What a dust thou dost raise! Smallest of mortals, when 
mounted aloft by circumstances, come to seem great; 
smallest of phenomena connected with them are treated lo 
as important, and must be sedulously scanned, and 
commented upon with loud emphasis. 

That Mr. Croker should undertake to edit BosivelVs 
Life of Johnson was a praiseworthy but no miraculous 
procedure: neither could the accompUshment of such 15 
undertaking be, in an epoch like ours, anywise regarded 
as an event in Universal History; the right or the wrong 
accomplishment thereof was, in very truth, one of the 
most insignificant of things. However, it sat in a great 
environment, on the axle of a high, fast-rolling, parHa- 20 
mentary chariot; and all the world has exclaimed over 
it, and the author of it: What a dust thou dost raise! 
List to the Reviews, and " Organs of Public Opinion," 



62 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

from the National Omnibus upwards: criticisms, vi- 
tuperative and laudatory, stream from their thousand 
throats of brass and of leather; here chanting lo-pceans; 
there grating harsh thunder or vehement shrew-mouse 
5 squeaklets; till the general ear is filled, and nigh deafened. 
Boswell's Book had a noiseless birth, compared with 
this Edition of Boswell's Book. On the other hand, 
consider with what degree of tumult Paradise Lost and 
the Iliad were ushered in! 

10 To swell such clamor, or prolong it beyond the time 
seems nowise our vocation here. At most, perhaps, 
we are bound to inform simple readers, with all possible 
brevity, what manner of performance and Edition this 
is; especially, whether, in our poor judgment, it is worth 

15 laying out three pounds sterling upon, yea or not. The 
whole business belongs distinctly to the lower ranks of 
the trivial class. 

Let us admit, then, with great readiness, that as John- 
son once said, and the Editor repeats, " all works which 

20 describe manners require notes in sixty or seventy years, 
or less;" that, accordingly, a new Edition of Boswell was 
desirable; and that Mr. Croker has given one. For this 
task he had various qualifications: his own voluntary 
resolution to do it; his high place in society, unlocking 

25 all manner of archives to him; not less, perhaps, a cer- 
tain anecdotico-biographic turn of mind, natural or 
acquired; we mean a love for the minuter events of His- 
tory, and talent for investigating these. Let us admit, 
too, that he has been very dihgent; seems to have made 

30 inquiries perseveringly, far and near; as well as drawn 



BOS well's life of JOHNSON 63 

freely from his own ample stores; and so tells us, to ap- 
pearance quite accurately, much that he has not found 
lying on the highways, but has had to seek and dig for. 
Numerous persons, chiefly of quality, rise to view in 
these Notes; when and also where they came into this 5 
world, received office or promotion, died and were buried 
(only what they did, except digest, remaining often too 
mysterious), — is faithfully enough set down. Whereby 
all that their various and doubtless widely scattered 
Tombstones could have taught us, is here presented, at 10 
once in a bound Book. Thus is an indubitable conquest, 
though a small one, gained over our great enemy, the all- 
destroyer Time, and as such shall have welcome. 

Nay, let us say that the spirit of Diligence, exhibited 
in this department, seems to attend the Editor honestly 15 
throughout; he keeps everywhere a watchful outlook 
on his Text; reconciling the distant with the present, 
or at least indicating and regretting their irreconcilability; 
elucidating, smoothing down; in all ways exercising, ac- 
cording to ability, a strict editorial superintendence. 20 
Any little Latin or even Greek phrase is rendered into 
English, in general with perfect accuracy; citations are 
verified, or else corrected. On all hands, moreover, 
there is a certain spirit of Decency maintained and in- 
sisted on: if not good morals, yet good manners are 25 
rigidly inculcated; if not Religion, and a devout Chris- 
tian heart, yet Orthodoxy, and a cleanly Shovel-hatted 
look, — which, as compared with flat Nothing, is some- 
thing very considerable. Grant, too, as no contemptible 
triumph of this latter spirit, that though the Editor is 30 



64 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

known as a decided Politician and Party-man, he has 
carefully subdued all temptations to transgress in that 
way: except by quite involuntary indications, and rather 
as it were the pervading temper of the whole, you could 
5 not discover on which side of the Political Warfare he 
is enUsted and fights. This, as we said, is a great triumph 
of the Decency-principle: for this, and for these other 
graces and performances, let the Editor have all praise. 
Herewith, however, must the praise unfortunately 

10 terminate. Diligence, Fidelity, Decency, are good and 
indispensable: yet, without Faculty, without Light, they 
will not do the work. Along with that Tombstone- 
information, perhaps even without much of it, we could 
have liked to gain some answer, in one way or other, 

15 to this wide question: What and how was English Life 
in Johnson's time; wherein has ours grown to differ 
therefrom? In other words: What things have we to 
forget, what to fancy and remember, before we, from 
such distance, can put ourselves in Johnson's place; 

20 and so, in the full sense of the term, understand him, his 
sayings and his doings? This was indeed specially the 
problem which a Commentator and Editor had to solve: 
a complete solution of it should have lain in him, his 
whole mind should have been filled and prepared with 

25 perfect insight into it; then, whether in the way of ex- 
press Dissertation, of incidental Exposition and Indica- 
tion, opportunities enough would have occurred of bring- 
ing out the same : what was dark in the figure of the Past 
had thereby been enlightened; Boswell had, not in show 

30 and word only, but in very fact been made new again, 



BOS well's life of JOHNSON 65 

readable to us who are divided from him, even as he 
was to those close at hand. Of all which very little has 
been attempted here; accomplished, we should say, next 
to nothing, or altogether nothing. 

Excuse, no doubt, is in readiness for such omission; 5 
and, indeed, for innumerable other failings; — as where, 
for example, the Editor will punctually explain what is 
already sun-clear; and then anon, not without frank- 
ness, declare frequently enough that "the Editor does 
not understand " " the Editor cannot guess," — while, for 10 
most part, the Reader cannot help both guessing and 
seeing. Thus, if Johnson say, in one sentence, that 
''English names should not be used in Latin verses;" 
and then, in the next sentence, speak blamingly of 
"Carteret being used as a dactyl," will the generahty 15 
of mortals detect any puzzle there ? Or again, where poor 
Boswell writes, "I always remember a remark made to 
me by a Turkish lady, educated in France: 'Ma joi, 
monsieur, noire bonheur depend de la jacon que noire sang 
circule;^ " — though the Turkish lady here speaks Eng- 20 
lish-French, where is the call for a Note like this: "Mr. 
Boswell no doubt fancied these words had some meaning, 
or he would hardly have quoted them; but what that 
meaning is the Editor cannot guess"? The Editor is 
clearly no witch at a riddle. — For these and all kindred 25 
deficiencies the excuse, as we said, is at hand; but the 
fact of their existence is not the less certain and regret- 
table. 

Indeed, it, from a very early stage of the business, be- 
comes afflictively apparent, how much the Editor, so 30 
Prose — 5 



66 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

well furnished with all external appliances and means, 
is from within unfurnished with means for forming to 
himself any just notion of Johnson or of Johnson's Life; 
and therefore of speaking on that subject with much hope 
5 of edifying. Too lightly is it from the first taken for 
granted that Hunger, the great basis of our life, is also 
its apex and ultimate perfection; that as "Neediness and 
Greediness and Vainglory" are the chief qualities of 
most men, so no man, not even a Johnson, acts or can 

10 think of acting on any other principle. Whatsoever, 
therefore, cannot be referred to the two former categories 
(Need and Greed), is without scruple ranged under the 
latter. It is here properly that our Editor becomes bur- 
densome, and, to the weaker sort, even a nuisance. 

15 "What good is it," will such cry, "when we had still 
some faint shadow of belief that man was better than 
a selfish Digesting-machine, what good is it to poke in, 
at every turn, and explain how this and that, which we 
thought noble in old Samuel, was vulgar, base; that for 

20 him, too, there was no reality but in the Stomach; and 
except Pudding, and the finer species of pudding which is 
named Praise, Hfe had no pabulum ? Why, for instance, 
when we know that Johnson loved his good Wife, and 
says expressly that their marriage was *a love-match on 

25 both sides,' — should two closed lips open to tell us only 
this: 'Is it not possible that the obvious advantage of 
having a woman of experience to superintend an estab- 
lishment of this kind (the Edial school) may have con- 
tributed to a match so disproportionate in point of age ? — 

30 Ed.*? Or again when, in the Text, the honest cynic 



BOS well's life of JOHNSON 67 

speaks freely of his former poverty, and it is known that 
he once lived on fourpence half- penny a day, — need a 
Commentator advance, and comment thus: 'When we 
find Dr. Johnson tell unpleasant truths to, or of, other 
men, let us recollect that he does not appear to have 5 
spared himself, on occasions in which he might be for- 
given for doing so?' Why, in short," continues the ex- 
asperated Reader, "should Notes of this species stand 
affronting me, when there might have been no Note at 
all?" — Gentle Reader, we answer. Be not wroth. What 10 
other could an honest Commentator do, than give thee 
the best he had? Such was the picture and theorem he 
had fashioned for himself of the world and of man's 
doings therein: take it, and draw wise inferences from 
it. If there did exist a Leader of Public Opinion, and 15 
Champion of Orthodoxy in the Church of Jesus of 
Nazareth, who reckoned that m.an's glory consisted in 
not being poor; and that a Sage, and Prophet of his time, 
must needs blush because the world had paid him at 
that easy rate of fourpence half-penny per diem, — was not 20 
the fact of such existence worth knowing, worth con- 
sidering ? 

Of a much milder hue, yet to us practically of an all- 
defacing, and for the present enterprise quite ruinous 
character, — is another grand fundamental failing; the 25 
last we shall feel ourselves obliged to take the pain of 
specifying here. It is, that our Editor has fatally, and 
almost surprisingly, mistaken the limits of an Editor's 
function; and so, instead of working on the margin with 
his Pen, to elucidate as best might be, strikes boldly 3° 



68 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

into the body of the page with his Scissors, and there 
cHps at discretion! Four Books Mr. C. had by him, 
wherefrom to gather light for the fifth, which was Bos- 
well's. What does he do but now, in the placidest 
5 manner, — slit the whole five into slips, and sew these 
together into a sextum quid, exactly at his own conven- 
ience, giving Boswell the credit of the whole! By what 
art-magic, our readers ask, has he united them? By 
the simplest of all: by Brackets. Never before was the 

10 full virtue of the Bracket made manifest. You begin a 
sentence under Boswell's guidance, thinking to be car- 
ried happily through it by the same: but no; in the mid- 
dle, perhaps after your semicolon, and some consequent 
"for," — starts up one of these Bracket-ligatures, and 

15 stitches you in from half a page to twenty or thirty pages 
of a Hawkins, Tyers, Murphy, Piozzi; so that often one 
must make the old sad reflection, "where we are, we 
know; whither we are going, no man knoweth!" It is 
truly said also, "There is much between the cup and the 

20 lip;" but here the case is still sadder: for not till after 
consideration can you ascertain, now when the cup is 
at the lip, what liquor is it you are imbibing; whether 
Boswell's French wine which you began with, or some 
of Piozzi 's ginger-beer, or Hawkins's entire, or perhaps 

25 some other great Brewer's penny-swipes or even alegar, 
which has been surreptitiously substituted instead 
thereof. A situation almost original; not to be tried a 
second time! But, in fine, what ideas Mr. Croker en- 
tertains of a literary whole and the thing called Book, 

30 and how the very Printer's Devils did not rise in mutiny 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 69 

against such a conglomeration as this, and refuse to 
print it, — may remain a problem. 

But now happily our say is said. All faults, the Moral- 
ists tell us, are properly shortcomings; crimes themselves 
are nothing other than a not doing enough; a fighting, 5 
but with defective vigor. How much more a mere 
insufficiency, and this after good efforts, in handicraft 
practice! Mr. Croker says: "The worst that can happen 
is that all the present Editor has contributed may, if 
the reader so pleases, be rejected as surplusage.^' It is 10 
our pleasant duty to take with hearty welcome what he 
has given; and render thanks even for what he meant 
to give. Next, and finally, it is our painful duty to de- 
clare, aloud if that be necessary, that his gift, as weighed 
against the hard money which the Booksellers demand 15 
for giving it you, is (in our judgment) very greatly the 
lighter. No portion, accordingly, of our small floating 
capital has been embarked in the business, or shall ever 
be; indeed, were we in the market for such a thing, there 
is simply no Edition of Boswell to which this last would 20 
seem preferable. And now enough, and more than 
enough ! 

We have next a word to say of James Boswell. Bos- 
well has already been much commented upon; but rather 
in the way of censure and vituperation, than of true 25 
recognition. He was a man that brought himself much 
before the world; confessed that he eagerly coveted fame, 
or if that were not possible, notoriety; of which latter 
as he gained far more than seemed his due, the public 
were incited, not only by their natural love of scandal, 30 



70 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

but by a special ground of envy, to say whatever ill of 
him could be said. Out of the fifteen millions that then 
Hved, and had bed and board, in the British Islands, 
this man has provided us a greater pleasure than any 
5 other individual, at whose cost we now enjoy ourselves; 
perhaps has done us a greater service than can be specially 
attributed to more than two or three: yet, ungrateful 
that we are, no written or spoken eulogy of James Bos- 
well anywhere exists; his recompense in soHd pudding 

10 (so far as copyright went) was not excessive; and as for 
the empty praise, it has altogether been denied him. 
Men are unwiser than children; they do not know the 
hand that feeds them. 

Boswell was a person whose mean or bad qualities 

15 lay open to the general eye; visible, palpable to the 
dullest. His good quahties, again, belonged not to the 
Time he lived in; were far from common then; indeed, 
in such a degree, were almost unexampled; not recog- 
nizable therefore by every one; nay, apt even (so strange 

20 had they grown) to be confounded with the very vices 
they lay contiguous to and had sprung out of. That 
he was a wine-bibber and gross liver; gluttonously fond 
of whatever would yield him a little solacement, were 
it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable enough. 

25 That he was vain, heedless, a babbler; had m^uch of the 
sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously 
spiced too with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; 
that he gloried much when the Tailor, by a court-suit, 
had made a new man of him; that he appeared at the 

30 Shakespeare Jubilee with a riband, imprinted "Corsica 



boswell's life or johnson 71 

BoswELL," round his hat; and in short, if you will, 
lived no day of his life without doing and saying more 
than one pretentious ineptitude: all this unhappily is 
evident as the sun at noon. The very look of Boswell 
seems to have signified so much. In that cocked nose, 5 
cocked partly in triumph over his weaker fellow-crea- 
tures, partly to snuff up the smell of coming pleasure, 
and scent it from afar; in those bag-cheeks, hanging like 
half- filled wine-skins, still able to contain more; in that 
coarsely protruded shelf-mouth, that fat dewlapped chin, 10 
in all this, who sees not sensuality, pretension, boisterous 
imbecility enough; much that could not have been orna- 
mental in the temper of a great man's overfed great man 
(what the Scotch name flunky), though it had been more 
natural there? The under part of Boswell's face is of 15 
a low, almost brutish character. 

Unfortunately, on the other hand, what great and 
genuine good lay in him was nowise so self-evident. 
That Boswell was a hunter after spiritual Notabilities, 
that he loved such, and longed, and even crept and 20 
crawled to be near them; that he first (in old Touch- 
wood Auchinleck's phraseology) "took on with PaoH;" 
and then being off with "the Corsican landlouper," took 
on with a schoolmaster, "ane that keeped a schule, and 
ca'd it an academy:" that he did all this, and could not 25 
help doing it, we account a very singular merit. The 
man, once for all, had an "open sense," an open loving 
heart, which so few have: where Excellence existed, he 
was compelled to acknowledge it; was drawn towards 
it, and (let the old sulphur-brand of a Laird say what 30 



72 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

he liked) could not hut walk with it, — if not as superior, 
if not as equal, then as inferior and lackey, better 
so than not at all. If we reflect now that this 
love of Excellence had not only such an evil nature 
5 to triumph over; but also what an education and social 
position withstood it and weighed it down, its innate 
strength, victorious over all these things, may astonish 
us. Consider what an inward impulse there must have 
been, how many mountains of impediment hurled aside, 

lo before the Scottish Laird could, as humble servant, em- 
brace the knees (the bosom was not permitted him) of 
the EngHsh Dominie! "Your Scottish Laird," says an 
English naturalist of these days, "may be defined as 
the hungriest and vainest of all bipeds yet known." 

15 Boswell too was a Tory; of quite peculiarly feudal, 
genealogical, pragmatical temper; had been nurtured 
in an atmosphere of Heraldry, at the feet of a very 
GamaHel in that kind; within bare walls, adorned, only 
with pedigrees, amid serving-men in threadbare livery; 

20 all things teaching him, from birth upwards, to remember 
that a Laird was a Laird. Perhaps there was a special 
vanity in his very blood: old Auchinleck had, if not the 
gay, tail-spreading, peacock vanity of his son, no little of 
the slow-stalking, contentious, hissing vanity of the gan- 

25 der; a still more fatal species. Scottish Advocates will yet 
tell you how the ancient man, having chanced to be the 
first sheriff appointed (after the abolition of " hereditary 
jurisdictions") by royal authority, was wont, in dull pom- 
pous tone, to preface many a deliverance from the bench 

30 with these words: "I, the first King's Sheriff in Scotland." 



boswell's life or johnson 73 

And now behold the worthy Bozzy, so prepossessed 
and held back by nature and by art, fly nevertheless 
like iron to its magnet, whither his better genius called! 
You may surround the iron and the magnet with what 
enclosures and encumbrances you please, — with wood, 5 
with rubbish, with brass: it matters not, the two feel 
each other, they struggle restlessly towards each other, 
they will be together. The iron may be a Scottish squire- 
let, full of gulosity and "gigmanity;" ^ the magnet an 
English plebeian, and moving rag-and-dust mountain, 10 
coarse, proud, irascible, imperious: nevertheless, behold 
how they embrace, and inseparably cleave to one another! 
It is one of the strangest phenomena of the past century, 
that at a time when the old reverent feeling of disciple- 
ship (such as brought men from far countries, with rich 15 
gifts, and prostrate soul, to the feet of the Prophets) had 
passed utterly away from m.en's practical experience, 
and was no longer surmised to exist (as it does), perennial, 
indestructible, in man's inmost heart, — James Boswell 
should have been the individual, of all others, predes- 20 
tined to recall it, in such singular guise, to the wonder- 
ing, and for a long while, laughing and unrecognizing 
world. 

It has been commonly said, The man's vulgar vanity 
was all that attached him to Johnson; he delighted to be 25 
seen near him, to be thought connected with him. Now 

J " Q. What do you mean by ' respectable ' ? — A. He always 
kept a gig." ( ThtcrtelVs Trial.) — " Thus," it has been said, 
" does society naturally divide itself into four classes : Noblemen, 
Gentlemen, Gigmen, and Men." 30 



74 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

let it be at once granted that no consideration spring- 
ing out of vulgar vanity could well be absent from the 
mind of James Boswell, in this his intercourse with 
Johnson, or in any considerable transaction of his life. 
5 At the same time, ask yourself: Whether such vanity, 
and nothing else, actuated him therein; whether this 
was the true essence and moving principle of the phe- 
nomenon, or not rather its outward vesture, and the acci- 
dental environment (and defacement) in which it came 

lo to light? The man was, by nature and habit, vain; a 
sycophant-coxcomb, be it granted: but had there been 
nothing more than vanity in him, was Samuel Johnson 
the man of men to whom he must attach himself? 
At the date when Johnson was a poor rusty-coated 

15 "scholar," dwelHng in Temple-lane, and indeed through- 
out their whole intercourse afterwards, were there not 
chancellors and prime ministers enough; graceful gentle- 
men, the glass of fashion; honor-giving noblemen; din- 
ner-giving rich men; renowned fire-eaters, sw^ordsmen, 

20 gownsmen; Quacks and Realities of all hues, — any one 
of whom bulked much larger in the world's eye than 
Johnson ever did? To any one of whom, by half that 
submissiveness and assiduity, our Bozzy might have 
recommended himself; and sat there, the envy of sur- 

25 rounding Hck-spittles; pocketing now solid emolument, 
swallowing now well-cooked viands and wines of rich 
vintage; in each case, also, shone on by some glittering 
reflex of Renown or Notoriety, so as to be the observed 
of innumerable observers. To no one of whom, how- 

30 ever, though otherwise a most diligent solicitor and pur- 



BOS WELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON 75 

veyor, did he so attach himself: such vulgar courtier- 
ships were his paid drudgery, or leisure-amusement; the 
worship of Johnson was his grand, ideal, voluntary 
business. Does not the frothy-hearted yet enthusiastic 
man, doffing his Advocate's-wig, regularly take post, 5 
and hurry up to London, for the sake of his Sage chiefly; 
as to a Feast of Tabernacles, the Sabbath of his whole 
year ? The plate-Hcker and wine-bibber dives into Bolt 
Court, to sip muddy coiTee with a cynical old man and 
a sour-tempered Wind old woman (feeling the cups, 10 
whether they are full, with her finger); and patiently 
endures contradictions without end; too happy so he 
may but be allowed to listen and live. Nay, it does not 
appear that vulgar vanity could ever have been much 
flattered by Boswell's relation to Johnson. Mr. Croker 15 
says, Johnson was, to the last, little regarded by the 
great world; from which, for a vulgar vanity, all honor, 
as from its fountain, descends. Bozzy, even among 
Johnson's friends and special admirers, seems rather to 
have been laughed at than envied: his officious, whisk- 20 
ing, consequential ways, the daily reproofs and rebuffs 
he underwent, could gain from the world no golden, but 
only leaden, opinions. His devout Discipleship seemed 
nothing more than a mean Spanielship, in the general 
eye. His mighty "constellation," or sun, round whom 25 
he, as satellite, observantly gyrated, was, for the mass of 
men, but a huge ill-snuffed tallow-light, and he a weak 
night-moth, circling foolishly, dangerously about it, 
not knowing what he wanted. If he enjoyed Highland 
dinners and toasts, as henchman to a new sort of chief- 30 



76 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

tain, Henry Erskine, in the domestic " Outer-House," 
could hand him a shilhng "for the sight of his Bear." 
Doubtless the man was laughed at, and often heard him- 
self laughed at for his Johnsonism. To be envied is the 
5 grand and sole aim of vulgar vanity; to be filled with 
good things is that of sensuality: for Johnson perhaps 
no man living envied poor Bozzy; and of good things 
(except himself paid for them) there was no vestige in 
that acquaintanceship. Had nothing other or better 

10 than vanity and sensuality been there, Johnson and 
Boswell had never come together, or had soon and finally 
separated again. 

In fact, the so copious terrestrial Dross that welters 
chaotically, as the outer sphere of this man's character, 

15 does but render for us more remarkable, more touching, 
the celestial spark of goodness, of light, and Reverence 
for Wisdom which dwelt in the interior, and could 
struggle through such encumbrances, and in some de- 
gree illuminate and beautify them. There is much 

20 lying yet undeveloped in the love of Boswell for John- 
son. A cheering proof, in a time which else utterly 
wanted and still wants such, that living Wisdom is quite 
infinitely precious to man, is the symbol of the Godlike 
to him, which even weak eyes may discern; that Loyalty, 

25 Discipleship, all that was ever meant by Hero-worship, 
lives perennially in the human bosom, and waits, even 
in these dead days, only for occasions to unfold it, and 
inspire all men with it, and again make the world alive! 
James Boswell we can regard as a practical witness (or 

30 real martyr) to this high everlasting truth. A wonderful 



BOS well's life of JOHNSON 77 

martyr, if you will; and in time which made such martyr- 
dom doubly wonderful: yet the time and its martyr per- 
haps suited each other. For a decrepit, death-sick Era, 
when Cant had first decisively opened her poison- 
breathing lips to proclaim that God-worship and Mam- 5 
mon-worship were one and the same, that Life was a 
Lie, and the Earth Beelzebub's, which the Supreme 
Quack should inherit; and so all things were fallen into 
the yellow leaf, and fast hastening to noisome corruption: 
for such an Era, perhaps no better Prophet than a parti- 10 
colored Zany-Prophet, concealing (from himself and 
others) his prophetic significance in such unexpected 
vestures, — was deserved, or would have been in place, 
A precious medicine lay hidden in floods of coarsest, 
most composite treacle; the world swallowed the treacle, 15 
for it suited the world's palate; and now, after half a 
century, may the medicine also begin to show itself! 
James Boswell belonged, in his corruptible part, to the 
lowest classes of mankind; a foolish, inflated creature, 
swimming in an element of self-conceit: but in his cor- 20 
ruptible there dwelt an incorruptible, all the more im- 
pressive and indubitable for the strange lodging it had 
taken. 

Consider, too, with what force, diligence, and vivacity 
he has rendered back all this which, in Johnson's neigh- 25 
borhood, his ''open sense" had so eagerly and freely 
taken in. That loose-flowing, careless-looking Work of 
his is as a picture painted by one of Nature's own Ar- 
tists; the best possible resemblance of a Reality; like 
the very image thereof in a clear mirror. Which indeed 30 



yS NINETEENTH CENTURY PEOSE 

it was: let but the mirror be clear, this is the great point; 
the picture must and will be genuine. How the babbhng 
Bozzy, inspired only by love, and the recognition and 
vision which love can lend, epitomizes nightly the words 
5 of Wisdom, the deeds and aspects of Wisdom, and so, 
by little and little, unconsciously works together for us 
a whole Johnsoniad; a more free, perfect, sunlit, and 
spirit-speaking likeness than for many centuries had 
been drawn by man of man! Scarcely since the days 

lo of Homer has the feat been equaled; indeed, in many 
senses, this also is a kind of heroic poem. The fit 
Odyssey of our unheroic age was to be written, not sung; 
of a Thinker, not of a Fighter; and (for want of a Homer) 
by the first open soul that might offer, — looked such even 

15 through the organs of a Boswell. We do the man's 
intellectual endowment great wrong, if we measure it 
by its mere logical outcome; though here, too, there is 
not wanting a light ingenuity, a figurativeness and 
fanciful sport, with glimpses of insight far deeper than 

20 the common. But Boswell's grand intellectual talent 
was (as such ever is) an unconscious one, of far higher 
reach and significance than Logic; and showed itself 
in the whole, not in parts. Here again we have that old 
saying verified, "The heart sees farther than the head." 

25 Thus does poor Bozzy stand out to us as an ill-assorted, 
glaring mixture of the highest and the lowest. What, 
indeed, is man's life generally but a kind of beast- 
godhood; the god in us triumphing more and more over 
the beast; striving more and more to subdue it under 

30 his feet? Did not the Ancients, in their wise, peren- 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 79 

nially-significant way, figure Nature itself, their sacred 
All, or Pan, as a portentous commingling of these two 
discords; as musical, humane, oracular in its upper part, 
yet ending below in the cloven hairy feet of a goat? 
The union of melodious, celestial Free-will and Reason 5 
with foul Irrationality and Lust; in which, nevertheless, 
dwelt a mysterious unspeakable Fear and half-mad 
panic Awe; as for mortals there well might! And is 
not man a microcosm, or epitomized mirror of that same 
Universe; or rather, is not that Universe even Himself, 10 
the reflex of his own fearful and wonderful being, ''the 
waste fantasy of his own dream ? " No wonder that man, 
that each man, and James Boswell like the others, 
should resemble it! The pecuHarity in his case was the 
unusual defect of amalgamation and subordination: the 15 
highest lay side by side with the lowest; not morally 
combined with it and spiritually transfiguring it, but 
tumbling in half-mechanical juxtaposition with it, and 
from time to time, as the mad alternation chanced, ir- 
radiating it, or ecHpsed by it. 20 

The world, as we said, has been but unjust to him; 
discerning only the outer terrestrial and often sordid 
mass; without eye, as it generally is, for his inner divine 
secret; and thus figuring him no wise as a god Pan, but 
simply of the bestial species, like the cattle on a thousand 25 
hills. Nay, sometimes a strange enough hypothesis has 
been started of him; as if it were in virtue even of these 
same bad qualities that he did his good work; as if it 
were the very fact of his being among the worst men in 
this world that had enabled him to write one of the best 30 



8o NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

books therein! Falser hypothesis, we may venture to 
say, never rose in human soul. Bad is by its nature 
negative, and can do nothing; whatsoever enables us to 
do anything is by its very nature good. Alas, that there 
5 should be teachers in Israel, or even learners, to whom 
this world-ancient fact is still problematical, or even 
deniable! Boswell wrote a good Book because he had a 
heart and an eye to discern Wisdom, and an utterance 
to render it forth; because of his free insight, his Hvely 

lo talent, above all, of his Love and childlike Open-minded- 
ness. His sneaking sycophancies, his greediness and 
forwardness, whatever w^as bestial and earthly in him, 
are so many blemishes in his Book, which still disturb 
us in its clearness; wholly hindrances, not helps. To- 

15 wards Johnson, however, his feeling was not Sycophancy, 
which is the lowest, but Reverence, which is the highest 
of human feelings. None but a reverent man (which so 
unspeakably few are) could have found his way from 
Boswell's environment to Johnson's: if such worship for 

20 real God-made superiors showed itself also as worship 
for apparent Tailor-made superiors, even as hollow in- 
terested mouth-worship for such, — the case, in this 
composite human nature of ours, was not miraculous, 
the more was the pity! But for ourselves, let every one 

25 of us cling to this last article of Faith, and know it as 
the beginning of all knowledge worth the name: That 
neither James Boswell's good Book, nor any other good 
thing, in any time or in any place, was, is, or can be per- 
formed by any man in virtue of his badness, but always 

30 and solely in spite thereof. 



BOS well's life of JOHNSON 8 1 

As for the Book itself, questionless the universal favor 
entertained for it is well merited. In worth as a Book 
we have rated it beyond any other product of the eight- 
eenth century: all Johnson's own Writings, laborious 
and in their kind genuine above most, stand on a quite 5 
inferior level to it; already, indeed, they are becoming 
obsolete for this generation; and for some future genera- 
tion may be valuable chiefly as Prolegomena and ex- 
pository Scholia to this Johnsoniad of Boswell. Which 
of us but remembers, as one of the sunny spots in his 10 
existence, the day when he opened these airy volumes, 
fascinating him by a true natural-magic! It was as if 
the curtains of the past wTre drawn aside, and we looked 
mysteriously into a kindred country, where dwelt our 
Fathers; inexpressibly dear to us, but which had seemed 15 
forever hidden from our eyes. For the dead Night had 
engulfed it; all was gone, vanished as if it had not been. 
Nevertheless, wondrously given back to us, there once 
more it lay; all bright, lucid, blooming; a little island 
of Creation amid the circumambient Void. There it 20 
still lies; Hke a thing stationary, imperishable, over which 
changeful Time were now accumulating itself in vain, 
and could not, any longer, harm it or hide it. 

If we examine by what charm it is that men are still 
held to this Lije of Johnson, now when so much else has 25 
been forgotten, the main part of the answer will perhaps 
be found in that speculation "on the import of Reality,''^ 
communicated to the world, last Month, in this Maga- 
zine. The Johnsoniad of Boswell turns on objects that 
in very deed existed; it is all true. So far other in melo- 30 
Prose — 6 



82 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

diousness of tone, it vies with the Odyssey^ or surpasses 
it, in this one point: to us these read pages, as those 
chanted hexameters were to the first Greek hearers, are, 
in the fullest, deepest sense, wholly credible. All the wit 
5 and wisdom lying embalmed in Boswell's Book, plen- 
teous as these are, could not have saved it. Far more 
scientific instruction (mere excitement and enlighten- 
ment of the thinking power) can be found in twenty 
other works of that time, which make but a quite sec- 

10 ondary impression on us. The other works of that time, 
however, fall under one of two classes: either they are 
professedly Didactic; and, in that way, mere Abstrac- 
tions, Philosophic Diagrams, incapable of interesting us 
much otherwise than as Euclid'' s Elements may do; or 

15 else, with all their vivacity and pictorial richness of color, 
they are Fictions and not Realities. Deep, truly, as Herr 
Sauerteig urges, is the force of this consideration: the 
thing here stated is a fact; these figures, that local habi- 
tation, are not shadow but substance. In virtue of such 

20 advantages, see how a very Boswell may become Poet- 
ical! 

Critics insist much on the poet that he should com- 
municate an ''Infinitude" to his dehneation; that by 
intensity of conception, by that gift of "transcendental 

25 Thought," which is fitly named genius and inspiration, 
he should inform the Finite with a certain Infinitude of 
significance; or, as they sometimes say, ennoble the Ac- 
tual into Idealness. They are right in their precept; they 
mean rightly. But in cases like this of the Johnsoniad 

30 (such is the dark grandeur of that "Time-element," 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 8^ 

wherein man's soul here below lives imprisoned), the 
Poet's task is, as it were, done to his hand: Time itself, 
which is the outer veil of eternity, invests, of its own ac- 
cord, with an authentic, felt "infinitude" whatsoever 
it has once embraced in its mysterious folds. Consider 5 
all that lies in that one word Fast! What a pathetic, 
sacred, in every sense poetic, meaning is implied in it; 
a meaning growing ever the clearer, the farther we re- 
cede in Time, — the fnore of that same Past we have to 
look through! — On whicR ground indeed must Sauerteig 10 
have built, and not without plausibility, in that strange 
thesis of his: "that History, after all, is the true Poetry; 
that Reality, if rightly interpreted, is grander than Fic- 
tion; nay that even in the right interpretation of Reality 
and History does genuine Poetry consist." 15 

Thus for Boswell's Life of Johnson has Time done, 
is Time still doing, what no ornament of Art or Arti- 
fice could have done for it. Rough Samuel and sleek 
wheedling James were, and are not. Their Life and 
whole personal Environment has melted into air. The 20 
Mitre Tavern still stands in Fleet Street; but where now 
is its scot-and-lot paying, beef-and-ale loving, cocked- 
hatted pot-bellied Landlord; its rosy-faced, assiduous 
Landlady, with all her shining brass-pans, waxed tables, 
well-filled larder-shelves; her cooks, and bootjacks, and 25 
errand-boys, and watery-mouthed hangers-on? Gone! 
Gone! The becking waiter, that with wreathed smiles, 
wont to spread for Samuel and Bozzy their supper of 
the gods, has long since pocketed his last sixpence; and 
vanished, sixpences and all, Uke a ghost at cock-crowing. 30 



84 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

The Bottles they drank out of are all broken, the Chairs 
they sat on all rotted and burnt; the very Knives and 
Forks they ate with have rusted to the heart, and become 
brown oxide of iron, and mingled with the indiscriminate 
5 clay. All, all, has vanished; in very deed and truth, 
like that baseless fabric of Prospero's air-vision. Of 
the Mitre Tavern nothing but the bare walls remain 
there: of London, of England, of the World, nothing but 
the bare walls remain; and these also decaying (were 

10 they of adamant), only slower.* The mysterious River of 
Existence rushes on: a new Billow thereof has arrived, 
and lashes wildly as ever round the old embankments; 
but the former Billow, with its loud, mad eddyings, 
where is it? — Where! — Now this Book of Boswell's, 

15 this is precisely a Revocation of the Edict of Destiny; 
so that Time shall not utterly, not so soon by several 
centuries, have dominion over us. A little row of Naph- 
tha-lamps, with its Hne of Naphtha-light, burns clear 
and holy through the dead Night of the Past: they who 

20 were gone are still here; though hidden they are re- 
vealed, though dead they yet speak. There it shines, 
that little miraculously lamp-lit Pathway; shedding its 
feebler and feebler twilight into the boundless dark 
Oblivion, for all that our Johnson touched has become 

25 illuminated for us: on which miraculous little pathway 
we can still travel, and see wonders. 

It is not speaking with exaggeration, but with strict 
measured sobriety, to say that this Book of Boswell's 
will give us more real insight into the History of England 

30 during those days than twenty other Books, falsely en- 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 85 

titled '' Histories," which take to themselves that special 
aim. What good is it to me though innumerable Smol- 
letts and Belshams keep dinning in my ears that a man 
named George the Third was born and bred up, and a 
man named George the Second died; that Walpole, and 5 
the Pelhams, and Chatham, and Rockingham, and Shel- 
burne, and North, with their Coalition or their Separation 
Ministries, all ousted one another; and vehemently 
scrambled for "the thing they called the Rudder of Gov- 
ernment, but which was in reality the Spigot of Taxa- 10 
tion"? That debates were held, and infinite jarring 
and jargoning took place; and road-bills and enclosure- 
bills, and game-bills and India-bills, and Laws which 
no man can number, which happily few men needed to 
trouble their heads with beyond the passing moment, 15 
were enacted, and printed by the King's Stationer? 
That he who sat in Chancery and rayed-out speculation 
from the Woolsack, was now a man that squinted, now 
a man that did not squint? To the hungry and thirsty 
mind all this avails next to nothing. These men and 20 
these things, we indeed know, did swim, by strength or 
by specific levity as apples or as horse-dung, on the top 
of the current; but is it by painfully noting the courses, 
eddyings, and bobbings hither and thither of such drift- 
articles that you will unfold to me the nature of the cur- 25 
rent itself; of that mighty-rolling, loud-roaring Life- 
current, bottomless as the foundations of the Universe, 
mysterious as its Author ? The thing I want to see is not 
Redbook Lists, and Court Calendars, and Parliamentary 
Registers, but the Life of Man in England: what men 30 



86 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

did, thought, suffered, enjoyed; the form, especially the 
spirit, of their terrestrial existence, its outward environ- 
ment, its inward principle; how and what it was; whence 
it proceeded, whither it was tending. 
5 Mournful, in truth, is it to behold what the business 
called "History," in these so enUghtened and illuminated 
times, still continues to be. Can you gather from it, 
read till your eyes go out, any dimmest shadow of an 
answer to that great question: How men lived and had 

lo their being; were it but economically, as what wages 
they got, and what they bought with these? Unhappily 
you cannot. History will throw no light on any such 
matter. At the point where living memory fails, -it is 
all darkness; Mr. Senior and Mr. Sadler must still de- 

15 bate this simplest of all elements in the condition of the 
Past : Whether men were better off, in their mere larders 
and pantries, or were worse off than now! History, as 
it stands all bound up in gilt volumes, is but a shade more 
instructive than the wooden volumes of a Backgammon" 

20 board. How my Prime Minister was appointed is of 
less moment to me than How my House Servant was 
hired. In these days, ten ordinary Histories of King 
and Courtiers were well exchanged against the tenth part 
of one good History of Booksellers. 

25 For example, I would fain know the History of Scot- 
land: who can tell it me ? " Robertson," say innumerable 
voices; "Robertson against the world." I open Robert- 
son; and find there, through long ages too confused for 
narrative, and fit only to be presented in the way of 

30 epitome and distilled essence, a cunning answer and 



BOS well's life of JOHNSON 87 

hypothesis, not to this question: By whom, and by what 
means, when and how, was this fair broad Scotland, 
with its Arts and Manufactures, Temples, Schools, 
Institutions, Poetry, Spirit, National Character, created, 
and made arable, verdant, pecuHar, great, here as I 5 
can see some fair section of it lying, kind and strong 
(like some Bacchus-tamed Lion), from the Castle-hill 
of Edinburgh? — but to this other question: How did 
the king keep himself ahve in those old days; and restrain 
so many Butcher Barons and ravenous Henchmen from 10 
utterly extirpating one another, so that killing went on 
in some sort of moderation? In the one little Letter of 
iEneas Sylvius, from old Scotland, there is more *of His- 
tory than in all this. — At length, however, we come to a 
luminous age, interesting enough: to the age of the 15 
Reformation. All Scotland is awakened to a second 
higher Hfe; the Spirit of the Highest stirs in every bosom, 
agitates every bosom; Scotland is convulsed, fermenting, 
struggling to body itself forth anew. To the herdsman, 
among his cattle in remote woods; to the craftsman, in 20 
his rude, heath-thatched workshop, among his rude 
guild-brethren; to the great and to the Httle, a n^w light 
has arisen: in town and hamlet groups are gathered, with 
eloquent looks, and governed or ungovernable tongues; 
the great and the little go forth together to do battle 25 
for the Lord against the mighty. We ask, with breath- 
less eagerness: How was it; how went it on? Let us 
understand it, let us see it, and know it! — In reply, is 
handed us a really graceful and most dainty little Scan- 
dalous Chronicle (as for some Journal of Fashion) of 30 



«8 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

two persons: Mary Stuart, a Beauty, but over light- 
headed; and Henry Darnley, a Booby, who had fine 
legs. How these first courted, billed, and cooed, accord- 
ing to nature; then pouted, fretted, grew utterly enraged, 
5 and blew one another up with gunpowder: this, and not 
the History of Scotland, is what we good-naturedly read. 
Nay, by other hands, something like a horse-load of 
other Books have been written to prove that it was the 
Beauty who blew up the Booby, and that it was not she. 

10 Who or what it was, the thing once for all being so ef- 
fectually done, concerns us little. To know Scotland, at 
that great epoch, were a valuable increase to knowledge: 
to know poor Darnley, and see him with burning candle, 
from center to skin, were no increase of knowledge at 

15 all. — Thus is History written. 

Hence, indeed, comes it that History, which should 
be "the essence of innumerable Biographies," will tell, 
us, question it as we like, less than one genuine Biog- 
raphy may do, pleasantly and of its own accord! The 

20 time is approaching when History will be attempted on 
quite other principles; when the Court, the Senate, and 
the Battle-field, receding more and more into the back- 
ground, the Temple, the Workshop, and Social Hearth, 
will advance more and more into the foreground; and 

25 History will not content itself with shaping some ansW^r 
to that question: How were men taxed and kept quiet 
then? but will seek to answer this other infinitely wider 
and higher question: How and what were men then? 
Not our Government only, or the ''house wherein our 

30 life was led," but the Life itself we led there, will be 



BOS well's life or johnson 89 

inquired into. Of which latter it may be found that 
Government, in any modern sense of the word, is after 
all but a secondary condition: in the mere sense of Tax- 
ation and Keeping quiet, a small, almost a pitiful one. — 
Meanwhile let us welcome such Boswells, each in his 5 
degree, as bring us any genuine contribution, were it 
never so inadequate, so inconsiderable. 

An exception was early taken against this Life of 
Johnson, and all similar enterprises, which we here 
recommend; and has been transmitted from critic to 10 
critic, and repeated in their several dialects, uninter- 
ruptedly, ever since: That such jottings-down of care- 
less conversation are an infringement of social privacy; 
a crime against our highest Freedom, the Freedom of 
man's intercourse with man. To this accusation, which 15 
we have read and heard oftener than enough, might it 
not be well for once to offer the flattest contradiction, 
and plea of Not at all guilty? Not that conversa- 
tion is noted down, but that conversation should not 
deserve noting down, is the evil. Doubtless if conversa- 20 
tion be falsely recorded, then is it simply a Lie and 
worthy of being swept with all dispatch to the Father 
of Lies. But if, on the other hand, conversation can be 
authentically recorded and any one is ready for the task, 
let him by all means proceed with it; let conversation be 25 
kept in remembrance to the latest date possible. Nay, 
should the consciousness that a man may be among us 
''taking notes" tend, in any measure, to restrict those 
floods of idle insincere speech, with which the thought of 
mankind is well-nigh drowned, — were it other than the 30 



90 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

most indubitable benefit ? He who speaks honestly cares 
not, needs not care, though his words be preserved to 
remotest time: for him who speaks dishonestly, the fit- 
test of all punishments seems to be this same, which the 
5 nature of the case provides. The dishonest speaker, not 
he only who purposely utters falsehoods, but he who 
does not purposely, and with sincere heart, utter Truth, 
and Truth alone; who babbles he knows not what, and 
has clapped no bridle on his tongue, but lets it run racket, 

lo ejecting chatter and futility, — is among the most indis- 
putable malefactors omitted, or inserted, in the Criminal 
Calendar. To him that will well consider it, idle speak- 
ing is precisely the beginning of all HoUowness, Halfness, 
Infidelity (want of Faithfulness); the genial atmosphere 

15 in which rank weeds of every kind attain the mastery over 
noble fruits in man's life, and utterly choke them out: 
one of the most crying maladies of these days, and to be 
testified against, and in all ways to the uttermost with- 
stood. Wise, of a wisdom far beyond our shallow depth, 

20 was that old precept : Watch thy tongue; out of it are the 
issues of Life! "Man is properly an incarnated word:'' 
the word that he speaks is the man himself. Were eyes 
put into our head, that we might see; or only that we 
might fancy, and plausibly pretend, we had seen? Was 

25 the tongue suspended there, that it might tell truly what 
we had seen, and make man the soul's-brother of man; 
or only that it might utter vain sounds, jargon, soul- 
confusing, and so divide man, as by enchanted walls of 
Darkness, from union with man? Thou who wearest 

30 that cunning, Heaven-made organ, a Tongue, think well 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON 9 1 

of this. Speak not, I passionately entreat thee, till thy 
thought hath silently matured itself, till thou have other 
than mad and mad-making noises to emit: hold thy 
tongue (thou hast it a-holding) till some meaning lie be- 
hind, to set it wagging. Consider the significance of 5 
Silence; it is boundless, never by meditating to be ex- 
hausted; unspeakably profitable to thee! Cease that 
chaotic hubbub, wherein thy own soul runs to waste, 
to confused suicidal dislocation and stupor: out of Silence 
comes thy strength. " Speech is silvern. Silence is golden; 10 
Speech is human, Silence is divine." Fool! thinkest thou 
that because no Boswell is there with ass-skin and black- 
lead to note thy jargon, it therefore dies and is harmless? 
Nothing dies, nothing can die. No idlest word thou 
speakest but is a seed cast into Time, and grows through 15 
all Eternity! The Recording Angel, consider it well, 
is no fable, but the truest of truths : the paper tablets thou 
canst burn; of the "iron leaf" there is no burning. — 
Truly, if we can permit God Almighty to note down our 
conversation, thinking it good enough for Him, — any 20 
poor Boswell need not scruple to work his will of it. 

Leaving now this our English Odyssey, with its Singer 
and Schohast, let us come to the Ulysses; that great 
Samuel Johnson himself, the far-experienced, "much- 
enduring man," whose labors and pilgrimage are here 25 
sung. A full-length image of his Existence has been pre- 
served for us: and he, perhaps of all living Englishmen, 
was the one who best deserved that honor. For if it is 
true and now almost proverbial, that "the Life of the 



92 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

lowest mortal, if faithfully recorded, would be interest- 
ing to the highest;" how much more when the mortal in 
question was already distinguished in fortune and natural 
quality, so that his thinkings and doings were not sig- 
5 nificant of himself only, but of large masses of mankind! 
"There is not a man whom I meet on the streets," says 
one, "but I could like, were it otherwise convenient, to 
know his Biography:" nevertheless, could an enhght- 
ened curiosity be so far gratified, it must be owned the 

10 Biography of most ought to be, in an extreme degree, 
summary. In this world there is so wonderfully little 
self-subsistence among men; next to no originality 
(though never absolutely none) : one Life is too servilely 
the copy of another; and so in whole thousands of them 

15 you find Httle that is properly new; nothing but the old 
song sung by a new voice, with better or worse execu- 
tion, here and there an ornamental quaver, and false 
notes enough: but the fundamental tune is ever the same; 
and for the words^ these, aU that they meant stands 

20 written generally on the Churchyard-stone: Natus sum; 
esiirieham, qucBreham; nunc repletus requiesco. Mankind 
sail their Life-voyage in huge fleets, following some single 
whale-fishing or herring-fishing Commodore: the log- 
book of each differs not, in essential purport, from that 

25 of any other; nay the most have no legible log-book 
(reflection, observation not being among their talents); 
keep no reckoning, only keep in sight of the flagship,— 
and fish. Read the Commodore's Papers (know his 
Life); and even your lover of that street Biography will 

30 have learned the most of what he sought after. 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON 93 

Or, the servile imitancy, and yet also a nobler rela- 
tionship and mysterious union to one another which 
lies in such imitancy, of Mankind might be illustrated 
under the different figure (itself nowise original) of a 
Flock of Sheep. • Sheep go in flocks for three reasons: 5 
First, because they are of a gregarious temper, and love 
to be together: Secondly, because of their cowardice; 
they are afraid to be left alone: Thirdly, because the 
common run of them are dull of sight, to a proverb, and 
can have no choice in roads; sheep can in fact see nothing; 10 
in a celestial Luminary, and a scoured pewter Tankard, 
would discern only that both dazzled them, and were of 
unspeakable glory. How like their fellow-creatures of 
the human species! Men, too, as was from the first 
maintained here, are gregarious; then surely faint- 15 
hearted enough, trembling to be left by themselves; 
above all, dull-sighted, down to the verge of utter blind- 
ness. Thus are we seen ever running in torrents, and 
mobs, if we run at all; and after what foolish scoured 
Tankards, mistaking them for suns! Foolish Turnip- 20 
lanterns likewise, to all appearance supernatural, keep 
whole nations quaking, their hair on end. Neither 
know we, except by blind habit, where the good pastures 
lie: solely when the sweet grass is between our teeth, we 
know it, and chew it; also when grass is bitter and scant, 25 
we know it, — and bleat and butt: these last two facts 
we know of a truth and in very deed. — Thus do Men 
and Sheep play their parts on this Nether Earth; wander- 
ing restlessly in large masses, they know not whither; for 
most part each following his neighbor, and his own nose. 30 



94 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Nevertheless, not always; look better, you shall find 
certain that do, in some small degree, know whither. 
Sheep have their Bell-wether; some ram of the folds, en- 
dued with more valor, with clearer vision than other 
5 sheep; he leads them through the wolds, by height and 
hollow, to the woods and water-courses, for covert or for 
pleasant provender; courageously marching, and if need 
be, leaping, and with hoof and horn doing battle, in the 
van: him they courageously, and with assured heart, fol- 
io low. Touching it is, as every herdsman will inform you, 
with what chivalrous devotedness these woolly Hosts ad- 
here to their Wether; and rush after him, through good 
report and through bad report, were it into safe shelters 
and green thymy nooks, or into asphaltic lakes and the 
15 jaws of devouring lions. Ever also must we recall that 
fact which we owe Jean Paul's quick eye: "If you hold a 
stick before the Wether, so that he, by necessity, leaps 
in passing you, and then withdraw your stick, the Flock 
vidll nevertheless all leap as he did; and the thousandth 
20 sheep shall be found impetuously vaulting over air, as 
the first did over an otherwise impassable barrier." 
Reader, wouldst thou understand Society, ponder well 
those ovine proceedings; thou wilt find them all curiously 
significant. 
25 Now if sheep always, how much more must men al- 
ways, have their Chief, their Guide! Man too is by 
nature quite thoroughly gregarious: nay, ever he struggles 
to be something more, to be social; not even when So- 
ciety has become impossible does that deep-seated 
30 tendency and effort forsake him. Man, as if by miracu- 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON 95 

lous magic, imparts his Thoughts, his Mood of mind to 
man; an unspeakable communion binds all past, present, 
and future men into one indissoluble whole, almost into 
one living Individual. Of which high, mysterious Truth, 
this disposition to imitate, to lead and be led, this im- 5 
possibiHty not to imitate, is the most constant, and one 
of the simplest manifestations. To "imitate!" which of 
us all can measure the significance that lies in that one 
word? By virtue of which the infant Man, born at 
Woolsthorpe, grows up not to be a hairy Savage, and 10 
chewer of Acorns, but an Isaac Newton and Discoverer of 
Solar Systems ! — Thus, both in a celestial and terrestrial 
sense, are we a Flock, such as there is no other: nay, 
looking away from the base and ludicrous to the sublime 
and sacred side of the matter (since in every matter there 15 
are two sides), have not we also a Shepherd, "if we will 
but hear his voice"? Of those stupid multitudes there 
is no one but has an immortal Soul within him; a reflex 
and living image of God's whole Universe: strangely, 
from its dim environment, the light of the Highest looks 20 
through him; — for which reason, indeed, it is that we 
claim a brotherhood with him, and so love to know his 
History, and come into clearer and clearer union with 
all that he feels, and says, and does. 

However, the chief thing to be noted was this: Amid 25 
those dull millions, who, as a dull flock, roll hither and 
thither, whithersoever they are led; and seem all sight- 
less and slavish, accomplishing, attempting little save 
what the animal instinct in its somewhat higher kind 
might teach, To keep themselves and their young ones 30 



gG NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

alive, — are scattered here and there superior natures, 
whose eye is not destitute of free vision, nor their heart 
of free volition. These latter, therefore, examine and 
determine, not what others do, but what it is right to 
S do; towards which and which only, will they, with such 
force as is given them, resolutely endeavor: for if the 
Machine, living or inanimate, is merely fed, or desires 
to be fed, and so works; the Person can wzV/, and so do. 
These are properly our Men, our Great Men; the guides 

lo of the dull host, — which follows them as by an irrevo- 
cable decree. They are the chosen of the world: they 
had this rare faculty not only of "supposing" and "in- 
clining to think," but of knowing and believing; the na- 
ture of their being was, that they lived not by Hearsay 

15 but by clear Vision; while others hovered and swam 
along, in the grand Vanity-fair of the World, blinded 
by the mere "Shows of things," these saw into the 
Things themselves, and could walk as men having an 
eternal loadstar, and with their feet on sure paths. Thus 

20 was there a Reality in their existence; something of a 
perennial character; in virtue of which indeed it is that 
the memory of them is perennial. Whoso belongs only 
to his own age, and reverences only its gilt Popinjays 
or soot-smeared Mumbojumbos, must needs die with it: 

25 though he have been crowned seven times in the Capitol, 
or seventy and seven times, and Rumor have blown his 
praises to all the four winds, deafening every ear there- 
with, — it avails not; there was nothing universal, noth- 
ing eternal in him; he must fade away, even as the 

30 Popinjay-gildings and Scarecrow-apparel, which he 



boswell's life or johnson 97. 

could not see through. The great man does, in good 
truth, belong to his own age; nay more so than any 
other man; being properly the synopsis and epitome of 
such age with its interests and influences: but belongs 
likewise to all ages, otherwise he is not great. What 5 
was transitory in him passes away; and an immortal 
part remains, the significance of which is in strict speech 
inexhaustible, — as that of every real object is. Aloft, 
conspicuous, on his enduring basis, he stands there, 
serene, unaltering; silently addresses to every new gen- 10 
eration a new lesson and monition. Well is his Life 
worth writing, worth interpreting; and ever, in the new 
dialect of new times, of re-writing and re-interpreting. 

Of such chosen men was Samuel Johnson: not rank- 
ing among the highest, or even the high, yet distinctly 15 
admitted into that sacred band; whose existence was no 
idle Dream, but a Reality which he transacted awake; 
nowise a Clothes-horse and Patent Digester, but a 
genuine Man. By nature he was gifted for the noblest 
of earthly tasks, that of Priesthood, and Guidance of 20 
mankind; by destiny, moreover, he was appointed to 
this task, and did actually, according to strength, fulfill 
the same: so that always the question, How; in what 
spirit; under what shape? remains for us to be asked 
and answered concerning him. For as the highest 25 
Gospel was a Biography, so is the Life of every good 
man still an indubitable Gospel, and preaches to the 
eye and heart and whole man, so that Devils even must 
believe and tremble, these gladdest tidings: "Man is 
heaven-born; not the thrall of Circumstances, of Ne- 30 
Prose — 7 



98 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

cessity, but the victorious subduer thereof: behold how 
he can become the 'Announcer of himself and of his 
Freedom;' and is ever what the Thinker has named him, 
'the Messias of Nature!' " — Yes, Reader, all this that 
5 thou hast so often heard about "force of circumstances," 
"the creature of the time," "balancing of motives," and 
who knows what melancholy stuff to the like purport, 
wherein thou, as in a nightmare Dream, sittest para- 
lyzed, and hast no force left, — was in very truth, if 

10 Johnson and waking men are to be credited, little other 

than a hag-ridden vision of death-sleep; some half-isict, 

more fatal at times than a whole falsehood. Shake it 

off; awake; up and be doing, even as it is given thee! 

The Contradiction which yawns wide enough in every 

15 Life, which it is the meaning and task of Life to recon- 
cile, was in Johnson's wider than in most. Seldom, for 
any man, has the contrast between the ethereal heaven- 
ward side of things, and the dark sordid earthward, been 
more glaring: whether we look at Nature's work with him 

20 or Fortune's, from first to last, heterogeneity, as of sun- 
beams and miry clay, is on all hands manifest. Whereby 
indeed, only this was declared, That much Life had been 
given him; many things to triumph over, a great work to 
do. Happily also he did it; better than the most. 

25 Nature had given him a high, keen-visioned, almost 
poetic soul; yet withal imprisoned it in an inert, un- 
sightly body: he that could never rest had not limbs 
that would move with him, but only roll and waddle: 
the inward eye, all-penetrating, all-embracing, must 

30 look through bodily windows that were dim, half- 



BOS well's life of JOHNSON 99 

blinded; he so loved men, and " never once saw the human 
face divine!" Not less did he prize the love of men; 
he was eminently social; the approbation of his fellows 
was dear to him, "valuable," as he owned, "if from the 
meanest of human beings:" yet the first impression he 5 
produced on every man was to be one of aversion, almost 
of disgust. By Nature it was further ordered that the 
imperious Johnson should be born poor: the ruler-soul, 
strong in its native royalty, generous, uncontrollable, 
like the Hon of the woods, was to be housed, then, in such 10 
a dwelHng- place : of Disfigurement, Disease, and, lastly, 
of a Poverty which itself made him the servant of serv- 
ants. Thus was the born King likewise a born Slave: 
the divine spirit of Music must awake imprisoned amid 
dull-croaking universal Discords; the Ariel finds himself 15 
incased in the coarse hulls of a Caliban. So is it more 
or less, we know (and thou, O Reader, knowest and 
feelest even now), with all men: yet with the fewest men 
in any such degree as with Johnson. 

Fortune, moreover, which had so managed his first 20 
appearance in the world, lets not her hand lie idle, or 
turn the other way, but works unweariedly in the same 
spirit, while he is journeying through the world. What 
such a mind, stamped of Nature's noblest metal, though 
in so ungainly a die, was specially and best of all fitted 25 
for, might still be a question. To none of the world's 
few Incorporated Guilds could he have adjusted himself 
without difficulty, without distortion; in none been a 
Guild-Brother well at ease. Perhaps, if we look to the 
strictly practical nature of his faculty, to the strength, 30 



lOO NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

decision, method that manifests itself in him, we may 
say that his caUing was rather towards Active than Specu- 
lative Ufe; that as Statesman (in the higher, now obsolete 
sense), Lawgiver, Ruler; in short, as Doer of the Work, 
5 he had shone even more than as Speaker of the Word. 
His honesty of heart, his courageous temper, the value 
he set on things outward and material, might have made 
him a King among Kings. Had the golden age of those 
new French Prophets, when it shall be: A chaciin selon 

lo sa capacite; a chaqiie capacite selon ses oeuvres, but ar- 
rived! Indeed, even in our brazen and Birmingham- 
lacker age, he himself regretted that he had not become 
a Lawyer, and risen to be Chancellor, which he might 
well have done. However, it was otherwise appointed. 

15 To no man does Fortune throw open all the kingdoms 
of this world, and say: It is thine; choose where thou wilt 
dwell ! To the most she opens hardly the smallest cranny 
or doghutch, and says, not without asperity: There, that 
is thine while thou canst keep it; nestle thyself there, and 

20 bless Heaven! Alas, men must fit themselves into many 
things: some forty years ago, for instance, the noblest 
and ablest Man in all the British lands might be seen 
not swaying the royal scepter, or the pontiff's censer, 
on the pinnacle of the World, but gauging ale-tubs in the 

25 Httle burgh of Dumfries! Johnson came a little nearer 
the mark than Burns: but with him too "Strength was 
mournfully denied its arena;" he too had to fight For- 
tune at strange odds, all his life long. 

Johnson's disposition for royalty (had the Fates so 

30 ordered it) is well seen in early boyhood. "His fa- 



BOSWELL^S LIFE OF JOHNSON iOl 

vorites," says Boswell, "used to receive very liberal 
assistance from him; and such was the submission and 
deference with which he was treated, that three of the 
boys, of whom Mr. Hector was sometimes one, used to 
come in the morning as his humble attendants, and carry 5 
him to school. One in the middle stooped, while he sat 
upon his back; and one on each side supported him; 
and thus was he borne triumphant." The purfly, sand- 
blind lubber and blubber, with his open mouth, and face 
of bruised honeycomb; yet already dominant, imperial, 10 
irresistible! Not in the " King's-chair" (of human arms) 
as we see, do his three satellites carry him along: rather 
on the TyranVs-saddle, the back of his fellow-creature, 
must he ride prosperous! — The child is father of the 
man. He who had seen fifty years into coming Time, 15 
would have felt that little spectacle of mischievous school- 
boys to be a great one. For us, who look back on it, 
and what followed it, now from afar, there arise ques- 
tions enough: How looked these urchins? What jackets 
and galligaskins had they; felt headgear, or of dogskin 20 
leather? What was old Lichfield doing then; what 
thinking? — and so on, through the whole series of Cor- 
poral Trim's "auxiliary verbs." A picture of it all 
fashions itself together; — only unhappily we have no 
brush and no fingers. 25 

Boyhood is now past; the ferula of Pedagogue waves 
harmless, in the distance: Samuel has struggled up to 
uncouth bulk and youthhood, wrestling with Disease 
and Poverty, all the way; which two continue still his 
companions. At College we see Httle of him; yet thus 30 



I02 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

much, that things went not well. A rugged wild-man of 
the desert, awakened to the feeling of himself; proud as 
the proudest, poor as the poorest; stoically shut up, 
silently enduring the incurable: what a world of blackest 
5 gloom, with sun-gleams and pale tearful moon-gleams, 
and flickerings of a celestial and an infernal splendor, 
was this that now opened for him! But the weather is 
wintry; and the toes of the man are looking through his 
shoes. His muddy features grow of a purple and sea- 
10 green color; a flood of black indignation mantHng be- 
neath. A truculent, raw-boned figure! Meat he has 
probably little; hope he has less: his feet, as we said, 
have come into brotherhood with the cold mire. 

" Shall I be particular," inquires Sir John Hawkins, " and 
15 relate a circumstance of his distress, that cannot be imputed to 
him as an effect of his own extravagance or irreg\ilarity, and con- 
sequently reflects no disgrace on his memory ? He had scarce 
any change of raiment, and, in a short time after Corbet left him, 
but one pair of shoes, and those so old that his feet were seen 
20 through them : a gentleman of his college, the father of an emi- 
nent clergyman now living, directed a servitor one morning to 
place a new pair at the door of Johnson's chamber ; who seeing 
them upon his first going out, so far forgot himself and the spirit 
which must have actuated his unknown benefactor, that, with all 
25 the indignation of an insulted man, he threw them away." 

How exceedingly surprising! — The Rev. Dr. Hall re- 
marks: "As far as we can judge from a cursory view of 
the weekly account in the buttery-books, Johnson ap- 
pears to have lived as well as other commoners and 
30 scholars." Alas! such "cursory view of the buttery 
books," now from the safe distance of a century, in the 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON 103 

safe chair of a College Mastership, is one thing; the con- 
tinual view of the empty (or locked) buttery itself was 
quite a different thing. But hear our Knight, how he 
farther discourses. "Johnson," quoth Sir Joh;i, "could 
not at this early period of his life divest himself of an 5 
idea that poverty was disgraceful; and was very severe 
in his censures of that economy in both our Universities, 
which exacted at meals the attendance of poor scholars, 
under the several denominations of Servitors in the one, 
and Sizers in the other: he thought that the scholar's, 10 
like the Christian life, leveled all distinctions of rank 
and worldly preeminence; but in this he was mistaken: 
civil poHty," &c., &c. — Too true! It is man's lot to err. 
However, Destiny, in all ways, means to prove the 
mistaken Samuel, and see what stuff is in him. He must 15 
leave these butteries of Oxford, Want like an armed 
man compelling him; retreat into his father's mean home; 
and there abandon himself for a season to inaction, dis- 
appointment, shame, and nervous melancholy nigh run 
mad: he is probably the wretchedest man in wide Eng- 20 
land. In all ways, he too must " become perfect through 
suffering. ^^ — High thoughts have visited him; his College 
Exercises have been praised beyond the walls of College; 
Pope himself has seen that Translation, and approved 
of it: Samuel had whispered to himself: I too am "one 25 
and somewhat." False thoughts; that leave only misery 
behind! The fever-fire of Ambition is too painfully 
extinguished (but not cured) in the frost-bath of Poverty. 
Johnson has knocked at the gate, as one having a right; 
but there was no opening: the world lies all encircled as 30 



I04 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

with brass; nowhere can he find or force the smallest 
entrance. An ushership at Market Bosworth, and "a 
disagreement between him and Sir Wolstan Dixie, the 
patron of the school," yields him bread of affliction and 
5 water of affliction; but so bitter, that unassisted human 
nature cannot swallow them. Young Samson will grind 
no more in the PhiKstine mill of Bosworth; quits hold 
of Sir Wolstan, and the "domestic chaplaincy, so far 
at least as to say grace at table," and also to be ''treated 

lo with what he represented as intolerable harshness;" and 
so, after "some months of such complicated misery," 
feeling doubtless that there are worse things in the world 
than quick death by Famine, "reHnquishes a situation, 
which all his life afterwards he recollected with the 

15 strongest aversion, and even horror." Men like Johnson 
are properly called the Forlorn Hope of the world: judge 
whether his hope was forlorn or not, by this Letter to a 
dull oily Printer who called himself Sylvanus Urban: 

" Sir, — As you appear no less sensible than your readers of the 
20 defect of your poetical article, you will not be displeased if (in 
order to the improvement of it) I communicate to you the senti- 
ments of a person who will undertake, on reasonable terms, some- 
times to fill a column. 

" His opinion is, that the public would," &c. &c. 
25 "If such a correspondence will be agreeable to you, be pleased 
to inform me in two posts what the conditions are on which you 
shall expect it. Your late offer (for a Prize Poem) gives me no 
reason to distrust your generosity. If you engage in any literary 
projects besides this paper, I have other designs to impart." 

30 Reader, the generous person, to whom this Letter goes 
addressed, is "Mr. Edmund Cave, at St. John's Gate, 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON 105 

London;" the addresser of it is Samuel Johnson, in 
Birmingham, Warwickshire. 

Nevertheless, Life raUies in the man; reasserts its 
right to be lived, even to be enjoyed. "Better a small 
bush," say the Scotch, "than no shelter:" Johnson learns 5 
to be contented with humble human things; and is there 
not already an actual reahzed human Existence, all 
stirring and living on every hand of him ? Go thou and 
do likewise! In Birmingham itself, with his own pur- 
chased goose-quill, he can earn "five pounds;" nay, 10 
finally, the choicest terrestrial good: a Friend, who will 
be Wife to him! Johnson's marriage with the good 
Widow Porter has been treated with ridicule by many 
mortals, who apparently had no understanding thereof. 
That the purbhnd, seamy-faced Wild-man, stalking 15 
lonely, woe-stricken, like some Irish Gallowglass with 
peeled club, whose speech no man knew, whose look all 
men both laughed at and shuddered at, should find any 
brave female heart to acknowledge, at first sight and 
hearing of him, "This is the most sensible man I ever 20 
met with;" and then, with generous courage, to take 
him to itself, and say. Be thou mine; be thou warmed 
here, and thawed to life! — in all this, in the kind Widow's 
love and pity for him, in Johnson's love and gratitude, 
there is actually no matter for ridicule. Their wedded 25 
Hfe, as is the common lot, was made up cf drizzle and 
dry weather; but innocence and worth dwelt in it; and 
when death had ended it, a certain sacredness: John- 
son's deathless affection for his Tetty was always ven- 
erable and noble. However, be all this as it might, 30 



Io6 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Johnson is now minded to wed; and will live by the trade 
of Pedagogy, for by this also may life be kept in. Let 
the world therefore take notice: ^^ At Edial near Lich- 
field, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are hoarded, and 
5 taught the Latin and Greek languages, by Samuel John- 
son." Had this Edial enterprise prospered, how dif- 
ferent might the issue have been! Johnson had lived 
a life of unnoticed nobleness, or swoln into some amor- 
phous Dr. Parr, of no avail to us; Bozzy would have 

lo dwindled into official insignificance, or risen by some 
other elevation; old Auchinleck had never been afflicted 
with "ane that keeped a schule," or obliged to violate 
hospitality by a: " Cromwell do? God, sir, he gart kings 
ken that there was a lith in their neck!" But the Edial 

15 enterprise did not prosper; Destiny had other work 
appointed for Samuel Johnson; and young gentlemen 
got board where they could elsewhere find it. This 
man was to become a Teacher of grown gentlemen, in 
the most surprising way; a Man of Letters, and Ruler 

20 of the British Nation for some time, — not of their 
bodies merely, but of their minds, not over them, but in 
them. 

The career of Literature could not, in Johnson's day, 
any more than now, be said to lie along the shores of a 
25 Pactolus: whatever else might be gathered there, gold- 
dust was nowise the chief produce. The world, from 
the times of Socrates, St. Paul, and far earlier, has always 
had its teachers; and always treated them in a peculiar 
way. A shrewd Townclerk (not of Ephesus), once, in 



BOSWELL^S LIFE OF JOHNSON 107 

founding a Burgh-Seminary, when the question came, 
How the Schoolmasters should be maintained ? delivered 
this brief counsel: " D — n them, keep them poorl'^ Con- 
siderable wisdom may lie in this aphorism. At all events, 
we see, the world has acted on it long, and indeed im- s 
proved on it, — putting many a Schoolmaster of its great 
Burgh-Seminary to a death, which even cost it something. 
The world, it is true, had for some time been too busy 
to go out of its way, and put any Author to death; how- 
ever, the old sentence pronounced against them was 10 
found to be pretty suffxient. The first Writers (being 
Monks) were sworn to a vow of Poverty; the modern 
Authors had no need to swear to it. This was the epoch 
when an Otway could still die of hunger; not to speak 
of your innumxcrable Scrogginses, whom "the Muse 15 
found stretched beneath a rug," with "rusty grate un- 
conscious of a fire," stocking-nightcap, sanded floor, 
and all the other escutcheons of the craft, time out of 
mind the heirlooms of Authorship. Scroggins, however, 
seems to have been but an idler; not at all so diligent as 20 
worthy Mr. Boyce, whom we might have seen sitting 
up in bed, with his wearing-apparel of Blanket about him, 
and a hole slit in the same, that his hand might be at 
liberty to work in its vocation. The worst was, that too 
frequently a blackguard recklessness of temper ensued, 25 
incapable of turning to account what good the gods even 
here had provided: your Boyces acted on some stoico- 
epicurean principle of carpe diem, as men do in bom- 
barded towns, and seasons of raging pestilence; — and so 
had lost not only their life and presence of mind, but 30 



Io8 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

their status as persons of respectability. The trade of 
Author was at about one of its lowest ebbs when John- 
son embarked on it. 

Accordingly we find no mention of Illuminations in 
5 the city of London when this same Ruler of the British 
nation arrived in it: no cannon-salvos are fired; no 
flourish of drums and trumpets greets his appearance on 
the scene. He enters quite quietly, with some copper 
halfpence in his pocket; creeps into lodgings in Exeter 
10 Street, Strand; and has a Coronation Pontiff also, of 
not less peculiar equipment, whom, with aU submissive- 
ness, he must wait upon, in his Vatican of St. John's 
Gate. This is the dull oily Printer alluded to above. 

*' Cave's temper," says our Knight Hawkins, " was phlegmatic: 

15 though he assumed, as the pubUsher of the Magazine, the name 
of Sylvanus Urban, he had few of those qualities that constitute 
urbanity. Judge of his want of them by this question, w'hich he 

once put to an author: ' Mr, , I hear you have justpubHshed 

a pamphlet, and am told there is a very good paragraph in it, upon 

20 the subject of music : did you write that yourself ? ' His discern- 
ment was also slow ; and as he had already at his command some 
writers of prose and verse, w^ho, in the language of Booksellers, 
are called good hands, he was the backwarder in making advances, 
or courting an intimacy with Johnson. Upon the first approach 

25 of a stranger, his practice was to continue sitting; a posture in 
which he was ever to be found, and for a few minutes to continue 
silent : if at any time he was inclined to begin the discourse, it 
was generally by putting a leaf of the Magazine, then in the press, 
into the hand of his visitor, and asking his opinion of it. . . . 

30 "He was so incompetent a judge of Johnson's abilities, that 
meaning at one time to dazzle him with the splendor of some of 
those luminaries in Literature, who favored him with their corre- 
spondence, he told him that if he would, in the evening, be at a 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 109 

certain alehouse in the neighborhood of Clerkenwell, he might 
have a chance of seeing Mr. Browne and another or two of those 
illustrious contributors: Johnson accepted the invitation; and 
being introduced by Cave, dressed in a loose horseman's coat, and 
such a great bushy wig as he constantly wore, to the sight of Mr. 5 
Browne, whom he found sitting at the upper end of a long table, 
in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, had his curiosity gratified." — Haw- 
kins^ 46-50. 

In fact, if we look seriously into the condition of Au- 
thorship at that period, we shall find that Johnson had 10 
undertaken one of the ruggedest of all possible enter- 
prises; that here as elsewhere Fortune had given him 
unspeakable Contradictions to reconcile. For a man of 
Johnson's stamp, the Problem was twofold: Firsts not 
only as the humble but indispensable condition of all 15 
else, to keep himself, if so might be, alive; but secondly^ 
to keep himself alive by speaking forth the Truth that 
was in him, and speakng it truly , that is, in the clearest 
and fittest utterance the Heavens had enabled him to 
give it, let the Earth say to this what she liked. Of which 20 
twofold Problem if it be hard to solve either member 
separately, how incalculably more so to solve it, when 
both are conjoined, and work with endless complication 
into one another! He that finds himself already kept 
alive can sometimes (unhappily not always) speak a 25 
little truth; he that finds himself able and willing, to 
all lengths, to speak lies, may, by watching how the wind 
sits, scrape together a livelihood, sometimes of great 
splendor: he, again, who finds himself provided with 
neither endowment, has but a ticklish game to play, and 30 
shall have praises if he win it. Let us look a little at both 



no NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

faces of the matter; and see what front they then offered 
our Adventurer, what front he offered them. 

At the time of Johnson's appearance on the field, 
Literature, in many senses, was in a transitional state; 
5 chiefly in this sense, as respects the pecuniary subsistence 
of its cultivators. It was in the very act of passing from 
the protection of patrons into that of the Public; no 
longer to supply its necessities by laudatory Dedications 
to the Great, but by judicious Bargains with the Book- 

10 sellers. This happy change has been much sung and 
celebrated; many a "lord of the lion heart and eagle 
eye" looking back with scorn enough on the bygone 
system of Dependency : so that now it were perhaps well 
to consider, for a moment, what good might also be in 

15 it, what gratitude we owe it. That a good was in it, 
admits not of doubt. Whatsoever has existed has had 
its value: without some truth and worth lying in it, the 
thing could not have hung together, and been the organ 
and sustenance and method of action for men that 

20 reasoned and were ahve. Translate a Falsehood which 
is wholly false into Practice, the result comes out zero; 
there is no fruit or issue to be derived from it. That in 
an age, when a Nobleman was still noble, still with his 
wealth the protector of worthy and humane things, and 

25 still venerated as such, a poor Man of Genius, his brother 
in nobleness, should, with unfeigned reverence, address 
him and say: "I have found Wisdom here, and would 
fain proclaim it abroad; wilt thou, of thy abundance, 
afford me the means?" — in all this there was no base- 

30 ness; it was wholly an honest proposal, which a free 



BOS well's life of JOHNSON III 

man might make, and a free man listen to. So might 
a Tasso, with a Gerusalemme in his hand or in his head, 
speak to a Duke of Ferrara ; so might a Shakespeare to his 
Southampton; and Continental Artists generally to their 
rich Protectors, — in some countries, down almost to these 5 
days. It was only when the reverence became feigned, 
that baseness entered into the transaction on both sides; 
and, indeed, flourished there with rapid luxuriance, till 
that became disgraceful for a Dryden which a Shake- 
speare could once practice without offense. 10 

Neither, it is very true, was the new way of Book- 
seller Maecenasship worthless; which opened itself at 
this juncture, for the most important of all transport- 
trades, now when the old way had become too miry and 
impossible. Remark, moreover, how this second sort 15 
of Maecenasship, after carrying us through nearly a 
century of Literary Time, appears now to have well- 
nigh discharged its function also; and to be working 
pretty rapidly toward some third method, the exact con- 
ditions of which are yet nowise visible. Thus all things 20 
have their end; and we should part with them all, not 
in anger, but in peace. The Bookseller System, during 
its peculiar century, the whole of the eighteenth, did carry 
us handsomely along; and many good Works it has left 
us, and many good Men it maintained: if it is now ex- 25 
piring by Puffery, as the Patronage System did by 
Flattery (for Lying is ever the forerunner of Death, 
nay, is itself Death), let us not forget its benefits; how it 
nursed Literature through boyhood and school-years, as 
Patronage had wrapped it in soft swaddling-bands; — till 30 



112 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

now we see it about to put on the toga vinlis, could it 
but find any such! 

There is tolerable traveling on the beaten road, run 
how it may; only on the new road not yet leveled and 
5 paved, and on the old road all broken into ruts and 
quagmires, is the traveling bad or impracticable. The 
difficulty lies always in the transiiion from one method 
to another. In which state it was that Johnson now 
found Literature; and out of which, let us also say, he 

lo manfully carried it. What remarkable mortal first paid 
copyright in England we have not ascertained; perhaps, 
for almost a century before, some scarce visible or 
ponderable pittance of wages had occasionally been 
yielded by the Seller of books to the Writer of them: 

15 the original Covenant, stipulating to produce Paradise 
Lost on the one hand, and Five Pounds Sterling on the 
other, still lies (we have been told) in black-on-white, 
for inspection and purchase by the curious, at a Book- 
shop in Chancery Lane. Thus had the matter gone on, 

20 in a mixed confused way, for some threescore years; — 
as ever, in such things, the old system overlaps the new, 
by some generation or two, and only dies quite out when 
the new has got a complete organization and weather- 
worthy surface of its own. Among the first Authors, 

25 the very first of any significance, who lived by the day's 
wages of his craft, and composedly faced the world on 
that basis, was Samuel Johnson. 

At the time of Johnson's appearance there were still 
two ways on which an Author might attempt proceed- 

30 ing: there were the Maecenases proper in the West End 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON II3 

of London; and the Maecenases virtual of St. John's 
Gate and Paternoster Row. To a considerate man it 
might seem uncertain which method were the preferable: 
neither had very high attractions; the Patron's aid was 
now well-nigh necessarily polluted by sycophancy, before 5 
it could come to hand: the Bookseller's was deformed 
with greedy stupidity, not to say entire wooden-headed- 
ness and disgust (so that an Osborne even required to be 
knocked down by an Author of spirit), and could barely 
keep the thread of life together. The one was the wages 10 
of suffering and poverty; the other, unless you gave 
strict heed to it, the wages of sin. In time, Johnson had 
opportunity of looking into both methods, and ascertain- 
ing what they were; but found, at first trial, that the 
former would in nowise do for him. Listen, once again, 15 
to that far-famed Blast of Doom, proclaiming into the 
ear of Lord Chesterfield, and, through him, of the listen- 
ing world, that Patronage should be no more! 

" Seven years, my Lord, have now past, since I waited in your 
outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door ; during which 20 
time I have been pushing on my Work ^ through difficulties, of 
which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the 
verge of publication, without one act of assistance,^ one word of 
encouragement, or one smile of favor. 

1 The English Dictionary. 25 

2 Were time and printer's space of no value, it were easy to 
wash away certain foolish soot-stains dropped here as " Notes ; " 
especially two : the one on this word and on Boswell's Note to it ; 
the other on the paragraph which follows. Let " Ed." look a 
second time ; he will find that Johnson's sacred regard for Truth 30 
is the only thing to be " noted " in the former case ; also, in the 

Prose— 8 



114 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

" The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and 
found him a native of the rocks. 

" Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a 
man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached 
5 ground, encumbers him with help ? The notice which you have 
been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been 
kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot 
enjoy it ; till I am solitary and cannot impart it ; till I am known 
and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to 
10 confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be 
unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a 
patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. 

" Having carried on my Work thus far with so little obligation 

to any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I 

15 should conclude it, if less be possible, with less ; for I have long 

been awakened from that dream of hope in which I once boasted 

myself with so much exaltation. 

"My Lord, your Lordship's most humble, most obedient 
servant, 

Sam, Johnson." 

20 And thus must the rebellious "Sam. Johnson" turn him 
to the Bookselling guild, and the wondrous chaos of 
"Author by trade;" and, though ushered into it only 
by that dull oily Printer, "with loose horseman's coat 
and such a great bushy wig as he constantly wore," 

25 and only as subaltern to some commanding officer 
"Browne, sitting amid tobacco-smoke at the head of 
a long table in the alehouse at Clerkenwell," — gird him- 
self together for the warfare; having no alternative! 
Little less contradictory was that other branch of 

30 the twofold Problem now set before Johnson: the speak- 

latter, that this of " Love's being a native of the rocks " actually 
has a " meaning." 



BOSWELL's life of JOHNSON II5 

ing forth of Truth. Nay, taken by itself, it had in those 
days become so complex as to puzzle strongest heads, 
with nothing else imposed on them for solution; and even 
to turn high heads of that sort into mere hollow vizards, 
speaking neither truth nor falsehood, nor anything but 5 
what the Prompter and Player {vtokpittjs) put into 
them. Alas! for poor Johnson, Contradiction abounded; 
in spirituals and in temporals, within and without. 
Born with the strongest unconquerable love of just 
Insight, he must begin to live and learn in a scene where 10 
Prejudice flourishes with rank luxuriance. England was 
all confused enough, sightless and yet restless, take it 
where you would; but figure the best intellect in England 
nursed up to manhood in the idol-cavern of a poor 
Tradesman's house, in the cathedral city of Lichfield! 15 
What is Truth? said jesting Pilate; What is Truth? 
might earnest Johnson much more emphatically say. 
Truth, no longer, like the Phoenix, in rainbow plumage, 
" poured, from her ghttering beak, such tones of sweetest 
melody as took captive every ear:" the Phoenix (waxing 20 
old) had well-nigh ceased her singing, and empty weari- 
some Cuckoos, and doleful monotonous Owls, innu- 
merable Jays also, and twittering Sparrows on the 
housetops, pretended they were repeating her. 

It was wholly a divided age, that of Johnson; Unity 25 
existed nowhere, in its Heaven, or in its Earth. Society, 
through every fiber, was rent asunder; all things, it was 
then becoming visible, but could not then be understood, 
were moving onwards, with an impulse received ages 
before, yet now first with a decisive rapidity, towards 30 



Il6 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

that great chaotic gulf, where, whether in the shape of 
French Revolutions, Reform Bills, or what shape soever 
bloody or bloodless, the descent and engulfment assume, 
we now see them weltering and boiling. Already Cant, 
5 as once before hinted, had begun to play its wonderful 
part (for the hour was come): two ghastly apparitions, 
unreal simulacra both. Hypocrisy and Atheism are 
already, in silence, parting the world. Opinion and Ac- 
tion, which should live together as wedded pair, "one 

10 flesh," more properly as Soul and Body, have commenced 
their open quarrel, and are suing for a separate main- 
tenance, — as if they could exist separately. To the 
earnest mind, in any position, firm footing and a Hfe 
of Truth was becoming daily more difhcult: in Johnson's 

IS position it was more difficult than in almost any other. 
If, as for a devout nature was inevitable and indis- 
pensable, he looked up to Religion, as to the pole-star 
of his voyage, already there was no fixed pole-star any 
longer visible; but two stars, a whole constellation of 

20 stars, each proclaiming itself as the true. There was the 
red portentous comet-star of Infidelity; the dimmer-burn- 
ing and dimmer fixed-star uncertain now whether not 
an atmospheric meteor of Orthodoxy: which of these to 
choose? The keener intellects of Europe had, almost 

25 without exception, ranged themselves under the former; 
for some half century, it had been the general effort of 
European speculation to proclaim that Destruction of 
falsehood was the only Truth; daily had Denial waxed 
stronger and stronger, Belief sunk more and more into 

30 decay. From our Bolingbrokes and Tolands the skepti- 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON I17 

cal fever had passed into France, into Scotland; and al- 
ready it smouldered, far and wide, secretly eating out the 
heart of England. Bayle had played his part; Voltaire, 
on a wider theater, was playing his, — Johnson's senior 
by some fifteen years: Hume and Johnson were children 5 
almost of the same year. To this keener order of in- 
tellects did Johnson's indisputably belong; was he to 
join thfem; was he to oppose them? A compKcated ques- 
tion: for, alas! the Church itself is no longer, even to 
him, wholly of true adamant, but of adamant and baked 10 
mud conjoined: the zealously Devout must find his 
Church tottering; and pause amazed to see, instead of 
inspired Priest, many a swine-feeding Trulliber minister- 
ing at her altar. It is not the least curious of the inco- 
herences which Johnson had to reconcile, that, though 15 
by nature contemptuous and incredulous, he was, at 
that time of day, to find his safety and glory in defend- 
ing, with his whole might, the traditions of the elders. 

Not less perplexingly intricate, and on both sides hol- 
low or questionable, was the aspect of Politics. Whigs 20 
struggling blindly forward, Tories holding blindly back; 
each with some forecast of a half truth; neither with any 
forecast of the whole! Admire here this other Contra- 
diction in the life of Johnson; that, though the most un- 
governable, and in practice the most independent of 25 
men, he must be a Jacobite, and worshiper of the Di- 
vine Right. In politics also there are Irreconcilables 
enough for him. As indeed how could it be otherwise? 
For when religion is torn asunder, and the very heart of 
man's existence set against itself, then in all subordinate 30 



Il8 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

departments there must needs be hollowness, incoher- 
ence. The Enghsh Nation had rebelled against a Ty- 
rant; and, by the hands of rehgious tyrannicides, ex- 
acted stern vengeance of him: Democracy had rfsen 
5 iron-sinewed, and, " like an infant Hercules, strangled ser- 
pents in its cradle." But as yet none knew the meaning 
or extent of the phenomenon: Europe was not ripe for 
it; not to be ripened for it but by the culture and various 
experience of another century and a half. And now, 

lo when the King-killers were all swept away, and a 
milder second picture was painted over the canvas of 
the -first, and betitled "Glorious Revolution," who 
doubted but the catastrophe was over, the whole busi- 
ness finished, and Democracy gone to its long sleep? 

15 Yet was it Kke a business finished and not finished; a 
lingering uneasiness dwelt in all minds: the deep-lying, 
resistless Tendency, which had still to be obeyed, could 
no longer be recognized; thus was there half-ness, in- 
sincerity, uncertainty in men's ways; instead of heroic 

20 Puritans and heroic Cavaliers, came now a dawdling 
set of argumentative Whigs, and a dawdling set of deaf- 
eared Tories; each half- foolish, each half- false. The 
Whigs were false and without basis; inasmuch as their 
whole object was Resistance, Criticism, Demolition, — 

25 they knew not why, or towards what issue. In Whig- 
gism, ever since a Charles and his Jeffries had ceased to 
meddle with it, and to have any Russel or Sidney to 
meddle with, there could be no divineness of character; 
nor till, in these latter days, it took the figure of a thor- 

30 ough-going, all-defying Radicalism, was there any solid 



BOS well's life of JOHNSON II9 

footing for it to stand on. Of the like uncertain, half- 
hollow nature had Toryism become, in Johnson's time; 
preaching forth indeed an everlasting truth, the duty of 
Loyalty; yet now (ever since the final expulsion of the 
Stuarts) having no Person, but only an Office to be loyal 5 
to; no living Soul to worship, but only a dead velvet- 
cushioned Chair. Its attitude, therefore, was stiff- 
necked refusal to move; as that of Whiggism was clam- 
orous command to move, — let rhyme and reason, on 
both hands, say to it what they might. The conse- 10 
quence was: Immeasurable floods of contentious jargon, 
tending nowhither; false conviction; false resistance to 
conviction; decay (ultimately to become decease) of 
whatsoever was once understood by the w^ords Principle 
or Honesty of heart; the louder triumph of Half-ness 15 
and Plausibility over Whole-ness and Truth; — at last, 
this all-overshadowing efflorescence of Quackery, which 
we now see, with all its deadening and kiUing fruits, in 
all its innumerable branches, down to the lowest. How, 
between these jarring extremes, wherein the rotten lay 20 
so inextricably intermingled with the sound, and as yet 
no eye could see through the ulterior meaning of the 
matter, was a faithful and true man to adjust himself? 

That Johnson, in spite of all drawbacks, adopted the 
Conservative side; stationed himself as the unyielding 25 
opponent of Innovation, resolute to hold fast the form 
of sound words, could not but increase, in no small 
measure, the difficulties he had to strive with. We mean 
the moral difficulties; for in economical respects, it might 
be pretty equally balanced; the Tory servants of the Pub- 30 



I20 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

lie had perhaps about the same chance of promotion as 
the Whig: and all the promotion Johnson aimed at was 
the privilege to live. But, for what, though unavowed, 
was no less indispensable, for his peace of conscience, 
5 and the clear ascertainment and feeling of his Duty as 
an inhabitant of God's world, the case was hereby ren- 
dered much more complex. To resist Innovation is easy 
enough on one condition: that you resist Inquiry. This 
is, and was, the common expedient of your common 

lo Conservatives; but it would not do for Johnson: he was 
a zealous recommender and practicer of Inquiry; once 
for all, could not and would not believe, much less speak 
and act, a Falsehood: the form of sound words, which 
he held fast, must have a meaning in it. Here lay the 

15 difficulty: to behold a portentous mixture of True and 
False, and feel that he must dv/ell and fight there; yet 
to love and defend only the True. How worship, when 
you cannot and will not be an idolater; yet cannot help 
discerning that the Symbol of your Divinity has half be- 

20 come idolatrous? This was the question, which John- 
son, the man both of clear eye and devout believing heart, 
must answer, — at peril of his life. The Whig or Skeptic, 
on the other hand, had a much simpler part to play. 
To him only the idolatrous side of things, nowise the 

25 divine one, lay visible: not worships therefore, nay in 
the strict sense not heart-honesty, only at most lip- and 
hand-honesty, is required of him. Wliat spiritual force 
is his, he can conscientiously employ in the work of 
caviUing, of pulling down what is False. For the rest, 

30 that there is or can be any Truth of a higher than sensual 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 121 

nature, has not occurred to him. The utmost, there- 
fore, that he as man has to aim at, is Respectability, 
the suffrages of his fellow-men. Such suffrages he may 
weigh as well as count; or count only: according as he 
is a Burke, or a Wilkes. But beyond these there Hes 5 
nothing divine for him; these attained, all is attained. 
Thus is his whole world distinct and rounded in; a clear 
goal is set before him; a firm path, rougher or smoother; 
at worst a firm region wherein to seek a path: let him 
gird up his loins, and travel on without misgivings! 10 
For the honest Conservative, again, nothing is distinct, 
nothing rounded in: Respectability can nowise be his 
highest Godhead; not one aim, but two conflicting aims 
to be continually reconciled by him, has he to strive 
after. A difficult position, as we said; which accordingly 15 
the most did, even in those days, but half defend, — by 
the surrender, namely, of their own too cumbersome 
honesty, or even understanding; after which the com- 
pletest defense was worth little. Into this difficult po- 
sition Johnson, nevertheless, threw him^self: found it in- 2c 
deed full of difficulties; yet held it out manfully as an 
honest-hearted, open-sighted man, while life was in him. 
Such was that same "twofold Problem" set before 
Samuel Johnson. Consider all these moral difficulties; 
and add to them the fearful aggravation, which lay in 25 
that other circumstance, that he needed a continual ap- 
peal to the Public, must continually produce a certain 
impression and conviction on the Public; that if he did 
not, he ceased to have "provision for the day that was 
passing over him," he could not any longer live! How 30 



122 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

a vulgar character once launched into this wild element; 
driven onwards by Fear and Famine; without other aim 
than to clutch what Provender (of Enjoyment in any 
kind) he could get, always if possible keeping quite. 
5 clear of the Gallows and Pillory (that is to say, minding 
heedfully both "person" and "character"), — would have 
floated hither and thither in it; and contrived to eat some 
three repasts daily, and wear some three suits yearly, 
and then to depart and disappear, having consumed his 

lo last ration: all this might be worth knowing, but were 
in itself a trivial knowledge. How a noble man, resolute 
for the Truth, to whom Shams and Lies were once for all 
an abomination, — was to act in it: here lay the mystery. 
By what methods, by what gifts of eye and hand, does 

IS a heroic Samuel Johnson, now when cast forth into that 
waste Chaos of Authorship, maddest of things, a mingled 
Phlegethon and Fleet-ditch, with its floating lumber, 
and sea-krakens, and mud-specters, — shape himself a 
voyage; of the transient driftwood, and the enduring iron, 

20 build him a seaworthy Lifeboat, and sail therein, un- 
drowned, unpolluted, through the roaring "mother of 
dead dogs," onwards to an eternal Landmark, and City 
that hath foundations? This high question is even the 
one answered in Boswell's Book; which Book we there- 

25 fore, not so falsely, have named a Heroic Poem; for in it 
there lies the whole argument of such. Glory to our brave 
Samuel! He accomplished this wonderful Problem; and 
now through long generations we point to him, and say: 
Here also was a Man; let the world once more have 

30 assurance of a Man! 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 1 23 

Had there been in Johnson, now when afloat on that 
confusion worse confounded of grandeur and squalor, 
no Hght but an earthly outward one, he too must have 
made shipwreck. With his diseased body, and vehement 
voracious heart, how easy for him to become a carpe- 5 
diem Philosopher, like the rest, and Hve and die as 
miserably as any Boyce of that Brotherhood! But 
happily there was a higher light for him; shining as a 
lamp to his path; which, in all paths, would teach him 
to act and walk not as a fool, but as wise, and in those 10 
evil days also, "redeeming the time." Under dimmer 
or clearer manifestations, a Truth had been revealed to 
him: I also am a Man; even in this unutterable element of 
Authorship, I may live as beseems a Man! That Wrong 
is not only different from Right, but that it is in strict 15 
scientific terms infinitely different; even as the gaining 
of the whole world set against the losing of one's own 
soul, or (as Johnson had it) a Heaven set against a Hell; 
that in all situations (out of the Pit of Tophet), wherein 
a living Man has stood or can stand, there is actually 20 
a Prize of quite infinite value placed within his reach, 
namely, a Duty for him to do: this highest Gospel, which 
forms the basis and worth of all other Gospels whatso- 
ever, had been revealed to Samuel Johnson; and the man 
had beheved it, and laid it faithfully to heart. Such 25 
knowledge of the transcendental, immeasurable charac- 
ter of Duty we call the basis of all Gospels, the essence 
of all ReHgion: he who with his whole soul knows not 
this as yet knows nothing, as yet is properly nothing. 

This, happily for him, Johnson was one of those that 30 



124 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

knew; under a certain authentic Symbol it stood forever 
present to his eyes: a Symbol, indeed, waxing old as 
doth a garment; yet which had guided forward as their 
Banner and celestial Pillar of Fire, innumerable saints 
5 and witnesses, the fathers of our modern world; and for 
him also had still a sacred significance. It does not ap- 
pear that at any time Johnson was what we call irre- 
ligious: but in his sorrow^s and isolation, when hope died 
away, and only a long vista of suffering and toil lay be- 

10 fore him to the end, then first did Religion shine forth 
in its meek, everlasting clearness; even as the stars do 
in black night, which in the daytime and dusk were 
hidden by inferior lights. How a true man, in the midst 
of errors and uncertainties, shall work out for himself 

15 a sure Life-truth; and adjusting the transient to the 
eternal, amid the fragments of ruined Temples build up, 
with toil and pain, a little Altar for himself, and worship 
there; how Samuel Johnson, in the era of Voltaire, can 
purify and fortify his soul, and hold real communion with 

20 the Highest, "in the Church of St. Clement Danes:" 
this too stands all unfolded in his Biography, and is 
among the most touching and memorable things there; 
a thing to be looked at with pity, admiration, awe. 
Johnson's Religion was as the light of life to him; with- 

25 out it his heart was all sick, dark, and had no guidance 
left. 

He is now enlisted, or impressed, into that unspeak- 
able shoeblack-seraph Army of Authors; but can feel 
hereby that he fights under a celestial flag, and will quit 

30 him like a man. The first grand requisite, an assured 



BOS well's life or johnson 125 

heart, he therefore has: what his outward equipments, 
and accouterments are, is the next question; an impor- 
tant, though inferior one. His intellectual stock, in- 
trinsically viewed, is perhaps inconsiderable: the fur- 
nishings of an English School and English University; 5 
good knowledge of the Latin tongue, a more uncertain 
one of Greek: this is a rather slender stock of Education 
wherewith to front the world. But then it is to be re- 
membered that his world was England; that such was 
the culture England commonly supplied and expected. 10 
Besides Johnson has been a voracious reader, though a 
desultory one, and oftenest in strange scholastic, too 
obsolete Libraries; he has also rubbed shoulders with the 
press of actual Life, for some thirty years now: views or 
hallucinations of innumerable things are weltering to and 15 
fro in him. Above all, be his weapons what they may, 
he has an arm that can wield them. Nature has given 
him her choicest gift: an open eye and heart. He will 
look on the world, wheresoever he can catch a glimpse 
of it, with eager curiosity: to the last, we find this a strik- 20 
ing characteristic of him; for all human interests he has 
a sense; the meanest handicraftsman could interest him, 
even in extreme age, by speaking of his craft: the ways 
of men are all interesting to him; any human thing that 
he did not know he wished to know. Reflection, more- 25 
over, Meditation, was what he practiced incessantly with 
or without his will : for the mind of the man was earnest, 
deep as well as humane. Thus would the world, such 
fragments of it as he could survey, form itself, or con- 
tinually tend to form itself, into a coherent whole; on 30 



126 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

any and on all phases of which his vote and voice must be 
well worth listening to. As a Speaker of the Word, he 
will speak real words; no idle jargon or hollow triviality 
will issue from him. His aim, too, is clear, attainable, 
5 that of working for his wages: let him do this honestly, 
and all else will follow of its own accord. 

With such omens, into such a warfare, did Johnson go 
forth. A rugged, hungry Kerne, or Gallowglass, as 
we called him: yet indomitable; in whom lay the true 

lo spirit of a Soldier. With giant's force he toils, since such 
is his appointment, were it but at hewing of wood and 
drawing of water for old sedentary bushy- wigged Cave; 
distinguishes himself by mere quantity, if there is to be 
no other distinction. He can write all things; frosty 

IS Latin verses, if these are the saleable commodity; Book- 
prefaces, Political Philippics, Review Articles, Parlia- 
mentary Debates: all things he does rapidly; still more 
surprising, all things he does thoroughly and well. How 
he sits there, in his rough-hewn, amorphous bulk, in 

20 that upper-room at St. John's Gate, and trundles off 
sheet after sheet of those Senate-of-Lilliput Debates, to 
the clamorous Printer's Devils waiting for them, with 
insatiable throat, downstairs; himself perhaps impransus 
all the while! Admire also the greatness of Literature; 

25 how a grain of mustard-seed cast into its Nile-waters, 
shall settle in the teeming mold, and be found, one day, 
as a Tree, in whose branches all the fowls of heaven may 
lodge. Was it not so with these Lilliput Debates? In 
that small project and act began the stupendous Fourth 

30 Estate; whose wide world-embracing influences what 



BOS well's life of JOHNSON 1 27 

eye can take in; in whose boughs are there not already 
fowls of strange feather lodged? Such things, and far 
stranger, were done in that wondrous old Portal, even in 
latter times. And then figure Samuel dining " behind the 
screen," from a trencher covertly handed in to him, at a 5 
preconcerted nod from the "great bushy wig;" Samuel 
too ragged to show face, yet "made a happy man of" 
by hearing his praise spoken. If to Johnson himself, 
then much more to us, may that St. John's Gate be a 
place we can " never pass without veneration." ^ 10 

1 All Johnson's places of resort and abode are venerable, and 
now indeed to the many as well as to the few; for his name has 
become great ; and, as we must often with a kind of sad admira- 
tion recognize, there is, even to the rudest man, no greatness so 
venerable as intellectual, as spiritual greatness; nay, properly, 15 
there is no other venerable at all. For example, what soul-sub- 
duing magic, for the very clown or craftsman of our England, 
lies in the word " Scholar " I " He is a Scholar : " he is a man 
7Viser than we ; of a wisdom to us boundless^ infinite : who shall 
speak his worth 1 Such things, we say, fill us with a certain 20 
pathetic admiration of defaced and obstructed yet glorious man ; 
archangel though in ruins, — or, rather, though in rubbish, of 
encumbrances and mud-incrustations, which also are not to be 
perpetual. 

Nevertheless, in this mad- whirling, all-forgetting London, the 25 
haunts of the mighty that were can seldom without a strange diffi- 
culty be discovered. Will any man, for instance, tell us which 
bricks it was in Lincoln's Inn Buildings, that Ben Jonson's hand 
and trowel laid ? No man, it is to be feared, — and also grumbled 
at. With Samuel Johnson may it prove otherwise ! A Gentle- 30 
man of the British Museum is said to have made drawings of all 
his residences : the blessing of Old Mortality be upon him I We 
ourselves, not without labor and risk, lately discovered Gough 



128 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Poverty, Distress, and as yet Obscurity, are his com- 
panions; so poor is he that his Wife must leave him, and 
seek shelter among other relations; Johnson's household 
has accommodation for one inmate only. To all his 

5 ever-varying, ever-recurring troubles, moreover, must be 
added this continual one of ill health, and its concomi- 
tant depressiveness: a galhng load, which would have 
crushed most common mortals into desperation, is his 
appointed ballast and life-burden; he "could not re- 

10 member the day he had passed free from pain." Never- 
theless, Life, as we said before, is always Life: a healthy 
soul, imprison it as you will, in squalid garrets, shabby 
coat, bodily sickness, or whatever else, will assert its 

Square, between Fleet Street and Holborn (adjoining both to 

15 Bolt Court and to Johnson's Court); and on the second day 
of search, the very House there, wherein the Ejiglish Dictionary 
was composed. It is the first or corner house on the right hand, 
as you enter through the arched way from the North-west. The 
actual occupant, an elderly, well-washed, decent -looking man, 

20 invited us to enter; and courteously undertook to be cicerone; 
though in his memory lay nothing but the foolishest jumble and 
hallucination. It is a stout, old-fashioned, oak-balustraded house : 
" I have spent many a pound and penny on it since then," said 
the worthy landlord; "here, you see, this Bedroom was the 

25 Doctor's study; that was the garden" (a plot of delved ground 
somewhat larger than a bed-quilt), "where he walked for exer- 
cise ; these three Garret Bedrooms " (where his three copyists sat 
and wrote) " were the place he kept his — Ptcpils in " ! Tempiis 
edax rericin ! Yet ferax also : for our friend now added, with a 

30 \vistful look, which strove to seem merely historical : " I let it all 
in Lodgings, to respectable gentlemen ; by the quarter, or the 
month ; its all one to me." — " To me also," whispered the ghost 
of Samuel, as we went pensively our ways. 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 1 29 

heaven-granted indefeasible Freedom, its right to con- 
quer difficulties, to do work, even to feel gladness. John- 
son does not whine over his existence, but manfully 
makes the most and best of it. "He said, a man might 
live in a garret at eighteenpence a-week: few people 5 
would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was 
easy to say, 'Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By 
spending threepence in a coffeehouse, he might be for 
some hours every day in very good company; he might 
dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread-and-milk for a 10 
penny, and do without supper. On dean-shirt day he 
went abroad and paid visits." Think by whom and of 
whom this was uttered, and ask then, Whether there is 
more pathos in it than in a whole circulating-library of 
Giaours and Harolds^ or less pathos? On another oc- 15 
casion, "when Dr. Johnson, one day, read his own 
Satire, in which the life of a scholar is painted, with the 
various obstructions thrown in his way to fortune and 
to fame, he burst into a passion of tears: Mr. Thrale's 
family and Mr. Scott only w^re present, who, in a jocose 20 
way, clapped him on the back, and said, * What's all 
this, my dear sir? Why, you and I and Herades, you 
know, were all troubled with melancholy.^ He was a very 
large man, and made out the triumvirate with Johnson 
and Hercules comically enough." These were sweet 25 
tears; the sweet victorious remembrance lay in them of 
toils indeed frightful, yet never flinched from, and now 
triumphed over. "One day it shall delight you to re- 
member labor done!" — Neither, though Johnson is ob- 
scure and poor, need the highest enjoyment of existence, 30 
Prose — 9 



130 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

that of heart freely communing with heart, be denied 
him. Savage and he wander homeless through the 
streets; without bed, yet not without friendly converse; 
such another conversation not, it is like, producible in 
5 the proudest drawing-room of London. Nor, under the 
void Night, upon the hard pavement, are their own 
woes the only topic: nowise; they "will stand by their 
country," they there, the two "Backwoodsmen" of the 
Brick Desert! 

10 Of all outward evils Obscurity is perhaps in itself the 
least. To Johnson, as to a healthy-minded man, the 
fantastic article, sold or given under the title of Fame, 
had little or no value but its intrinsic one. He prized 
it as the means of getting him employment and good 

15 wages; scarcely as anything more. His light and guid- 
ance came from a loftier source; of which, in honest 
aversion to all hypocrisy or pretentious talk, he spoke not 
to men; nay perhaps, being of a healthy mind, had never 
spoken to himself. We reckon it a striking fact in John- 

20 son's history, this carelessness of his to Fame. Most 
authors speak of their " Fame" as if it were a quite price- 
less matter; the grand ultimatum, and heavenly Con- 
stantine's-banner they had to follow, and conquer un- 
der. — ^Thy "Fame!" Unhappy mortal, where will it 

25 and thou both be in some fifty years? Shakespeare 
himself has lasted but two hundred; Homer (partly by 
accident) three thousand: and does not already an 
Eternity encircle every Me and every Thee? Cease 
then, to sit feverishly hatching on that "Fame" of thine; 

30 and flapping and shrieking with fierce hisses, like brood- 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 131 

goose on her last egg, if man shall or dare approach it! 
Quarrel not with me, hate me not, my brother: make 
what thou canst of thy egg, and welcome: God knows, I 
will not steal it; I believe it to be addle. — Johnson, for 
his part, was no man to be killed by a review; con- 5 
cerning which matter, it was said by a benevolent per- 
son: If any author can be reviewed to death, let it 
be, with all convenient dispatch, done. Johnson thank- 
fully receives any word spoken in his favor; is nowise 
disobliged by a lampoon, but will look at it, if pointed 10 
out to him, and show how it might have been done 
better: the lampoon itself is indeed nothing, a soap- 
bubble that next moment will become a drop of sour 
suds; but in the meanwhile, if it do anything, it keeps 
him more in the world's eye, and the next bargain will be 15 
all the richer: "Sir, if they should cease to talk of me, 
I must starve." Sound heart and understanding head: 
these fail no man, not even a Man of Letters! 

Obscurity, however, was, in Johnson's case, whether 
a light or heavy evil, likely to be no lasting one. He is 20 
animated by the spirit of a true workman, resolute to do 
his work well; and he does his work well; all his work, 
that of writing, that of living. A man of this stamp is 
unhappily not so common in the literary or in any other 
department of the world, that he can continue always 25 
unnoticed. By slow degrees, Johnson emerges; looming, 
at first, huge and dim in the eye of an observant few; 
at last disclosed, in his real proportions, to the eye of the 
whole world, and encircled with a "light-nimbus" of 
glory, so that whoso is not blind must and shall behold 30 



132 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

him. By slow degrees, we said; for this also is notable; 
slow but sure: as his fame waxes not by exaggerated 
clamor of what he seems to be, but by better and better 
insight of what he is, so it will last and stand wearing, 
5 being genuine. Thus indeed is it always, or nearly 
always, with true fame. The heavenly Luminary rises 
amid vapors; star-gazers enough must scan it with criti- 
cal telescopes; it makes no blazing, the world can either 
look at it, or forbear looking at it; not till after a time and 

10 times does its celestial eternal nature become indubitable. 
Pleasant, on the other hand, is the blazing of a Tar- 
barrel; the crowd dance merrily round it, with loud 
huzzaing, universal three-times-three, and, like Homer's 
peasants, "bless the useful light:" but unhappily it so 

15 soon ends in darkness, foul choking smoke; and is kicked 
into the gutters, a nameless imbroglio of charred staves, 
pitch-cinders, and vomissement dii diahle ! 

But indeed, from of old, Johnson has enjoyed all, or 
nearly all, that Fame can yield any man: the respect, the 

20 obedience of those that are about him and inferior to 
him; of those whose opinion alone can have any forcible 
impression on him. A little circle gathers round the Wise 
man; which gradually enlarges as the report thereof 
spreads, and more can come to see, and believe; for 

25 Wisdom is precious, and of irresistible attraction to all. 
"An inspired-idiot," Goldsmith, hangs strangely about 
him; though, as Hawkins says, "he loved not Johnson, 
but rather envied him for his parts; and once entreated 
a friend to desist from praising him, 'for in doing so,' 

30 said he, 'you harrow up my very soulJ' " Yet, on the 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 1 33 

whole, there is no evil in the "gooseberry-fool;" but 
rather much good; of a finer, if of a weaker, sort than 
Johnson's; and all the more genuine that he himself 
could never become conscious of it, — though unhappily 
never cease attempting to become so: the author of the 5 
genuine Vicar of Wakefield, nill he, will he, must needs 
fly towards such a mass of genuine Manhood; and Dr. 
Minor keep gyrating round Dr. Major, alternately at- 
tracted and repelled. Then there is the chivalrous Top- 
ham Beauclerk, with his sharp wit, and gallant courtly 10 
ways: there is Bennet Langton, an orthodox gentleman, 
and worthy; though Johnson once laughed, louder almost 
than mortal, at his last will and testament; and "could 
not stop his merriment, but continued it all the way 
till he got without the Temple-gate; then burst into such 15 
a fit of laughter that he appeared to be almost in a con- 
vulsion; and, in order to support himself, laid hold of 
one of the posts at the side of the foot-pavement, and 
sent forth peals so loud that, in the silence of the night, 
his voice seemed to resound from Temple-bar to Fleet- 20 
ditch!" Dastly comes his solid-thinking, solid-feeding 
Thrale, the well-beloved man; with Thralia, a bright 
papilionaceous creature, whom the elephant loved to 
play with, and wave to and fro upon his trunk. Not to 
speak of a reverent Bozzy, for w^hat need is there farther? 25 
— Or of the spiritual Luminaries, with tongue or pen, 
who made that age remarkable; or of Highland Lairds 
drinking, in fierce usquebaugh, "Your health, Toctor 
Shonson!" — still less of many such as that poor "Mr. 
F. Lewis," older in date, of whose birth, death, and whole 30 



134 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

terrestrial res gestcB^ this only, and strange enough this 
actually, survives: "Sir, he lived in London and hung 
loose upon society!" Stat Parvi nominis umbra. — 
In his fifty-third year he is beneficed, by the royal 
5 bounty, with a Pension of three hundred pounds. Loud 
clamor is always more or less insane: but probably the 
insanest of all loud clamors in the eighteenth century was 
this that was raised about Johnson's Pension. Men seem 
to be led by the noses; but, in reaUty, it is by the ears, — 

lo as some ancient slaves were, who had their ears bored; 
or as some modern quadrupeds may be, whose ears are 
long. Very falsely was it said, "Names do not change 
Things;" Names do change Things; nay, for most part 
they are the only substance which mankind can discern 

15 in Things. The whole sum that Johnson, during the 
remaining twenty years of his life, drew from the public 
funds of England, would have supported some Supreme 
Priest for about half as many weeks; it amounts very 
nearly to the revenue of our poorest Church- Overseer 

20 for one twelvemonth. Of secular Administrators of 
Provinces, and Horse-subduers, and Game-destroyers, 
we shall not so much as speak: but who were the Pri- 
mates of England, and the Primates of all England, 
during Johnson's days? No man has remembered. 

25 Again, is the Primate of all England something, or is he 
nothing? If something, then what but the man who, 
in the supreme degree, teaches and spiritually edifies, 
and leads towards Heaven by guiding wisely through the 
Earth, the living souls that inhabit England ? We touch 

30 here upon deep matters; which but remotely concern us, 



BOS well's life or johnson 135 

and might lead us into still deeper: clear, in the mean- 
while, it is that the true Spiritual Edifier and Soul's- 
Father of all England was, and till very lately continued 
to be, the man named Samuel Johnson, — whom this 
scot-and-lot-paying world cackled reproachfully to see 5 
remunerated like a Supervisor of Excise! 

If Destiny had beaten hard on poor Samuel, and did 
never cease to visit him too roughly, yet the last section 
of his Life might be pronounced victorious, and on the 
whole happy. He was not idle; but now no longer 10 
goaded on by want; the light which had shone irradiating 
the dark haunts of Poverty now illuminates the circles 
of Wealth, of a certain culture and elegant intelligence; 
he who had once been admitted to speak with Edmund 
Cave and Tobacco Browne, now admits a Reynolds 15 
and a Burke to speak with him. Loving friends are 
there; Listeners, even Answerers: the fruit of his long 
labors Hes round him in fair legible Writings, of Philos- 
ophy, Eloquence, Morality, Philology; some excellent, 
all worthy and genuine Works; for which, too, a deep, 20 
earnest murmur of thanks reaches him from all ends oi 
his Fatherland. Nay, there are works of Goodness, of 
undying Mercy, which even he has possessed the power 
to do: "What I gave I have; what I spent I had!" Early 
friends had long sunk into the grave; yet in his soul 25 
they ever lived, fresh and clear, with soft pious breath- 
ings towards them, not without a still hope of one day 
meeting them again in purer union. Such was Johnson's 
Life: the victorious Battle of a free, true Man. Finally 
he died the death of the free and true : a dark cloud of 3° 



136 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

death, solemn and not untinged with haloes of immor- 
tal Hope, "took him away," and our eyes could no 
longer behold him; but can still behold the trace and 
impress of his courageous honest spirit, deep-legible in 
5 the World's Business, wheresoever he walked and was. 

To estimate the quantity of Work that Johnson per- 
formed, how much poorer the World were had it wanted 
him, can, as in all such cases, never be accurately done; 
cannot, till after some longer space, be approximately 

10 done. All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, 
and sows itself anew, and so, in endless pahngenesia, 
lives and works. To Johnson's Writings, good and solid, 
and still profitable as they are, we have already rated 
his Life and Conversation as superior. By the one and 

15 by the other, who shall compute what effects have been 

produced, and are still, and into deep Time, producing? 

So much, however, we can already see : It is now some 

three quarters of a century that Johnson has been the 

Prophet of the English; the man by whose light the 

20 English people, in public and in private, more than by 
any other man's, have guided their existence. Higher 
light than that immediately practical one; higher virtue 
than an honest Prudence, he could not then communi- 
cate; nor perhaps could they have received: such light, 

25 such virtue, however, he did communicate. How to 
thread this labyrinthic Time, the fallen and falling Ruin 
of Times; to silence vain Scruples, hold firm to the last 
the fragments of old Behef, and with earnest eye still 
discern some glimpses of a true path, and go forward 



BOSWELL^S LIFE OF JOHNSON 1 37 

thereon, "in a world where there is much to be done, 
and little to be known:" this is what Samuel Johnson, 
by act and word, taught his nation; what his nation re- 
ceived and learned of him, more than of any other. We 
can view him as the preserver and transmitter of whatso- 5 
ever was genuine in the spirit of Toryism; which genuine 
spirit, it is now becoming manifest, must again embody 
itself in all new forms of Society, be what they may, that 
are to exist, and have continuance — elsewhere than on 
Paper. The last in many things, Johnson was the last 10 
genuine Tory; the last of EngHshmen who, with strong 
voice and whoUy-beheving heart, preached the Doc- 
trine of Standing-still; who, without selfishness or slavish- 
ness, reverenced the existing Powers, and could assert 
the privileges of rank, though himself poor, neglected, 15 
and plebeian; who had heart-devoutness with heart- 
hatred of cant, was orthodox-reHgious with his eyes 
open; and in all things and everywhere spoke out in 
plain English, from a soul wherein Jesuitism could find 
no harbor, and with the front and tone not of a diploma- 20 
tist but of a man. 

The last of the Tories was Johnson: not Burke, as is 
often said; Burke was essentially a Whig, and only on 
reaching the verge of the chasm towards which Whig- 
gism from the first was inevitably leading, recoiled; and, 25 
like a man vehement rather than earnest, a resplendent 
far-sighted Rhetorician rather than a deep, sure Thinker, 
recoiled with no measure, convulsively, and damaging 
what he drove back with him. 

In a world which exists by the balance of Antagonisms 30 



138 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

the respective merit of the Conservator and the Innova- 
tor must ever remain debatable. Great, in the mean- 
while, and undoubted for both sides, is the merit of him 
who, in a day of Change, walks wisely, honestly. John- 
5 son's aim was in itself an impossible one: this of stem- 
ming the eternal Flood of Time; of clutching all things 
and anchoring them down, and saying. Move not! — 
how could it, or should it, ever have success? The 
strongest man can but retard the current partially and 

10 for a short hour. Yet even in such shortest retardation, 
may not an inestimable value He? If England has es- 
caped the blood-bath of a French Revolution; and may 
yet, in virtue of this delay and of the experience it has 
given, work out her deliverance calmly into a new Era, 

IS let Samuel Johnson, beyond all contemporary or suc- 
ceeding men, have the praise for it. We said above that 
he was appointed to be Ruler of the British nation for a 
season: whoso will look beyond the surface, into the 
heart of the world's movements, may find that all Pitt 

20 Aaministrations, and Continental Subsidies, and Water- 
loo victories rested on the possibility of making England, 
yet a little while, Toryish, Loyal to the Old; and this 
again on the anterior reality, that the Wise had found 
such Loyalty still practicable, and recommendable. 

25 England had its Hume, as France had its Voltaires and 
Diderots; but the Johnson was pecuHar to us. 

If we ask now, by what endowment it mainly was 
that Johnson realized such a Life for himself and others; 
what quality of character the main phenomena of his 



BOSWELL's life of JOHNSON 139 

Life may be most naturally deduced from, and his other 
qualities most naturally subordinated to in our concep- 
tion of him, perhaps the answer were: The quality of 
Courage, of Valor; that Johnson was a Brave Man. 
The Courage that can go forth, once and away, to Chalk- 5 
Farm, and have itself shot, and snuffed out, with de- 
cency, is nowise wholly what we mean here. Such 
Courage we indeed esteem an exceeding small matter; 
capable of coexisting with a life full of falsehood, feeble- 
ness, poltroonery, and despicability. Nay oftener it is 10 
Cowardice rather that produces the result: for consider, 
Is the Chalk-Farm Pistoleer inspired with any reason- 
able BeHef and Determination; or is he hounded on by 
haggard indefinable Fear, — how he will be cut at public 
places, and "plucked geese of the neighborhood" will 15 
wag their tongues at him a plucked goose? If he go 
then, and be shot without shrieking or audible uproar, 
it is well for him: nevertheless there is nothing amazing 
in it. Courage to manage all this has not perhaps been 
denied to any man, or to any woman. Thus, do not re- 20 
cruiting sergeants drum through the streets of manu- 
facturing towns, and collect ragged losels enough; every 
one of whom, if once dressed in red, and trained a little, 
will receive fire cheerfully for the small sum of one shilling 
per diem, and have the soul blown out of him at last, 25 
with perfect propriety. The Courage that dares only 
die is on the whole no sublime affair; necessary indeed, 
yet universal; pitiful when it begins to parade itself. 
On this Globe of ours there are some thirty-six persons 
that manifest it, seldom with the smallest failure, dur- 30 



I40 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

ing every second of time. Nay, look at Newgate: do not 
the offscourings of Creation, when condemned to the 
gallows, as if they were not men but vermin, walk thither 
with decency, and even to the scowls and hootings of 
5 the whole Universe, give their stern good-night in si- 
lence? What is to be undergone only once, we may 
undergo; what must be, comes almost of its own accord. 
Considered as Duellist, what a poor figure does the 
fiercest Irish Whiskerando make compared with any 

lo English Game-cock, such as you may buy for fifteen- 
pence! 

The Courage we desire and prize is not the Courage 
to die decently, but to live manfully. This, when by 
God's grace it has been given, Hes deep in the soul; 

15 like genial heat, fosters all other virtues and gifts; with- 
out it they could not live. In spite of our innumerable 
Waterloos and Peterloos, and such campaigning as there 
has been, this Courage we allude to and call the only 
true one, is perhaps rarer in these last ages than it has 

20 been in any other since the Saxon Invasion under Hen- 
gist. Altogether extinct it can never be among men; 
otherwise the species Man were no longer for this world: 
here and there, in all times, under various guises, men 
are sent hither not only to demonstrate but exhibit it, 

25 and testify, as from heart to heart, that it is still possible, 
still practicable. 

Johnson, in the eighteenth century, and as Man of 
Letters, was one of such; and, in good truth, "the bravest 
of the brave." What mortal could have more to war 

30 with? Yet, as we saw, he yielded not, faltered not; 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 141 

he fought, and even, such was his blessedness, prevailed. 
Whoso will understand what it is to have a man's heart 
may find that, since the time of John Milton, no braver 
heart had beat in any English bosom than Samuel 
Johnson now bore. Observe, too, that he never called 5 
himself brave, never felt himself to be so; the more 
completely was so. No Giant Despair, no Golgotha- 
Death-dance or Sorcerer's-Sabbath of " Literary Life in 
London," appals this pilgrim; he works resolutely for 
deliverance; in still defiance steps stoutly along. The 10 
thing that is given him to do, he can make himself do; 
what is to be endured, he can endure in silence. 

How the great soul of old Samuel, consuming daily 
his own bitter unalleviable allotment of misery and toil, 
shows beside the poor flimsy little soul of young Boswell; 15 
one day flaunting in the ring of vanity, tarrying by the 
wine-cup and crying. Aha, the wine is red; the next 
day deploring his down-pressed, night-shaded, quite 
poor estate, and thinking it unkind that the whole 
movement of the Universe should go on, while his 20 
digestive-apparatus had stopped! We reckon John- 
son's "talent of silence" to be among his great and too 
rare gifts. Where there is nothing farther to be done, 
there shall nothing farther be said: like his own poor 
blind Welshwoman, he accomplished somewhat, and 25 
also "endured fifty years of wretchedness with unshaken 
fortitude." How grim was Life to him; a sick Prison- 
house and Doubting-castle! "His great business," he 
would profess, "was to escape from himself." Yet 
towards all this he has taken his position and resolution; 30 



142 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

can dismiss it all "with frigid indifference, having little 
to hope or to fear." Friends are stupid, and pusillan- 
imous, and parsimonious; "wearied of his stay, yet 
offended at his departure:" it is the manner of the world. 

5 "By popular delusion," remarks he with a gigantic 
calmness, "illiterate writers will rise into renown:" it is 
portion of the History of English literature; a perennial 
thing, this same popular delusion; and will — alter the 
character of the Language. 

10 Closely connected with this quality of Valor, partly 
as springing from it, partly as protected by it, are the 
more recognizable qualities of Truthfulness in word 
and thought, and Honesty in action. There is a reci- 
procity of influence here : for as the realizing of Truthful- 

15 ness and Honesty is the Life-light and great aim of 
Valor, so without Valor they cannot, in anywise, be 
realized. Now, in spite of all practical shortcomings, 
no one that sees into the significance of Johnson will say 
that his prime object was not Truth. In conversation, 

20 doubtless, you may observe him, on occasion, fighting as 
if for victory; — and must pardon these ebulliences of a 
careless hour, which were not without temptation and 
provocation. Remark likewise two things: that such 
prize-arguings were ever on merely superficial debatable 

25 questions; and then that they were argued generally 
by the fair laws of battle and logic-fence, by one cunning 
in that same. If their purpose was excusable, their effect 
was harmless, perhaps beneficial: that of taming noisy 
mediocrity, and showing it another side of a debatable 

30 matter; to see both sides of which was, for the first time, 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 1 43 

to see the Truth of it. In his Writings themselves, are 
errors enough, crabbed prepossessions enough; yet these 
also of a quite extraneous and accidental nature, no- 
where a willful shutting of the eyes to the Truth. Nay, 
is there not everywhere a heartfelt discernment, singular, 5 
almost admirable, if we consider through what confused 
conflicting lights and hallucinations it had to be attained, 
of the highest everlasting Truth, and beginning of all 
Truths: this namely, that man is ever, and even in the 
age of Wilkes and Whitfield, a Revelation of God to 10 
man; and lives, moves, and has his being in Truth only; 
is either true, or, in strict speech, is not at all ? 

Quite spotless, on the other hand, is Johnson's love 
of Truth, if we look at it as expressed in practice, as 
what we have named Honesty of action. "Clear your 15 
mind of Cant;" clear it, throw Cant utterly away: such 
was his emphatic, repeated precept; and did not he him- 
self faithfully conform to it ? The Life of this man has 
been, as it were, turned inside out, and examined with 
microscopes by friend and foe; yet was there no Lie 20 
found in him. His Doings and Writings are not shows 
but performances; you may weigh them in the balance, 
and they will stand weight. Not a line, not a sentence 
is dishonestly done, is other than it pretends to be. Alas! 
and he wrote not out of inward inspiration, but to earn 25 
his wages: and with that grand perennial tide of "popular 
delusion" flowing by; in whose waters he nevertheless 
refused to fish, to whose rich oyster-beds the dive was too 
muddy for him. Observe, again, with what innate 
hatred of Cant, he takes for himself, and offers to others, 30 



144 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

the lowest possible view of his business, which he fol- 
lowed with such nobleness. Motive for writing he had 
none, as he often said, but money; and yet he wrote so. 
Into the region of Poetic Art he indeed never rose; there 
5 was no ideal without him avowing itself in his work: 
the nobler was that unavowxd ideal which lay within 
him, and commanded saying, Work out thy Artisanship 
in the spirit of an Artist ! They who talk loudest about 
the dignity of Art, and fancy that they too are Artistic 

10 guild-brethren, and of the Celestials, — let them consider 
well what manner of man this was, who felt himself to 
be only a hired day-laborer. A laborer that was worthy 
of his hire; that has labored not as an eye-servant, but 
as one found faithful! Neither was Johnson in those 

IS days perhaps wholly a unique. Time was when, for 
money, you might have ware: and needed not, in all de- 
partments, in that of the Epic Poem, in that of the 
Blacking-bottle, to rest content with the mere persuasion 
that you had ware. It was a happier time. But as yet 

20 the seventh Apocalyptic Bladder (of Puffery) had not 
been rent open, — to whirl and grind, as in a West-Indian 
Tornado, all earthly trades and things into wreck, and 
dust, and consummation, — and regeneration. Be it 
quickly, since it must be! — 

25 That mercy can dwell only with Valor, is an old sen- 
timent or proposition; which in Johnson again receives 
confirmation. Few men on record have had a more 
merciful, tenderly affectionate nature than old Samuel. 
He was called the Bear; and did indeed too often look,. 

30 and roar, hke one; being forced to it in his own defense: 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON 1 45 

yet within that shaggy exterior of his there beat a heart 
warm as a mother's, soft as a Httle child's. Nay generally, 
his very roaring was but the anger of affection: the rage 
of a Bear, if you will; but of a Bear bereaved of her 
whelps. Touch his Religion, glance at the Church of 5 
England, or the Divine Right; and he was upon you! 
These things were his Symbols of all that was good and 
precious for men; his very Ark of the Covenant: whoso 
laid hand on them tore asunder his heart of hearts. Not 
out of hatred to the opponent, but of love to the thing 10 
opposed, did Johnson grow cruel, fiercely contradictory: 
this is an important distinction; never to be forgotten 
in our censure of his conversational outrages. But ob- 
serve also with what humanity, what openness of love, 
he can attach himself to all things: to a blind old woman, 15 
to a Doctor Levett, to a cat "Hodge." "His thoughts 
in the latter part of his life were frequently employed on 
his deceased friends; he often muttered these or such- 
like sentences: 'Poor man! and then he died.' " How 
he patiently converts his poor home into a Lazaretto; 20 
endures, for long years, the contradiction of the miserable 
and unreasonable; with him unconnected, save that they 
had no other to yield them refuge! Generous old man! 
Worldly possession he has little; yet of this he gives 
freely; from his own hard-earned shilling, the halfpence 25 
for the poor, that "waited his coming out," are not with- 
held: the poor "waited the coming out" of one not 
quite so poor! A Sterne can write sentimentalities on 
Dead Asses: Johnson has a rough voice; but he finds 
the wretched Daughter of Vice fallen down in the streets, 30 
Prose — 10 



146 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

carries her home on his own shoulders, and like a good 
Samaritan gives help to the help-needing, worthy or 
unworthy. Ought not Charity, even in that sense, to 
cover a multitude of Sins? No Penny-a-week Com- 
5 mittee-Lady, no manager of Soup-kitchens, dancer at 
Charity-balls, was this rugged, stern-visaged man; but 
where, in all England, could there have been found 
another soul so full of Pity, a hand so heavenlike boun- 
teous as his? The widow's mite, we know, was greater 

30 than all the other gifts. 

Perhaps it is this divine feehng of affection, through- 
out manifested, that principally attracts us towards 
Johnson. A true brother of men is he; and filial lover 
of the Earth; who, with little bright spots of Attach- 

15 ment, "where lives and works some loved one," has 
beautified "this rough solitary earth into a peopled gar- 
den." Lichfield, with its mostly dull and limited in- 
habitants, is to the last one of the sunny islets for him: 
Salve magna parens! Or read those Letters on his 

20 Mother's death: what a genuine solemn grief and pity 
lies recorded there; a looking back into the Past, un- 
speakably mournful, unspeakably tender. And yet calm, 
sublime; for he must now act, not look: his venerated 
Mother has been taken from him; but he must now write 

25 a Rasselas to defray her funeral. Again, in this httle 
incident, recorded in his Book of Devotion, are not the 
tones of sacred Sorrow and Greatness deeper than in 
many a blank verse Tragedy; as, indeed, "the fifth act 
of a Tragedy" (though unrhymed) does "lie in every 

30 death-bed, were it a peasant's, and of straw:" 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 147 

"Sunday, October 18, 1767. Yesterday, at about ten in the 
morning, I took my leave forever of my dear old friend, Catherine 
Chambers, who came to live with my mother about 1724, and has 
been but Httle parted from us since. She buried my father, my 
brother, and my mother. She is now fifty-eight years old. 5 

" I desired all to withdraw ; then told her that we were to part 
forever; that as Christians, we should part with prayer; and that 
I would, if she was willing, say a short prayer beside her. She 
expressed great desire to hear me ; and held up her poor hands 
as she lay in bed, with great fervor, while I prayed kneeUng by 10 
her. . . . 

'* I then kissed her. She told me that to part was the greatest 
pain she had ever felt, and that she hoped we should meet again 
in a better place. I expressed, with swelled eyes and great emo- 
tion of tenderness, the same hopes. We kissed and parted; I 15 
humbly hope, to meet again, and to part no more." 

Tears trickling down the granite rock: a soft well of 
Pity springs within! Still more tragical is this other 
scene: "Johnson mentioned that he could not in general 
accuse himself of having been an undutiful son. * Once, 20 
indeed,' said he, *I was disobedient: I refused to attend 
my father to Uttoxeter market. Pride was the source 
of that refusal, and the remembrance of it is painful. 
A few years ago I desired to atone for this fault.' " — 
But by what method ? — What method was now possible ? 25 
Hear it; the words are again given as his own, though 
here evidently by a less capable reporter: 

" Madam, I beg your pardon for the abruptness of my departure 
in the morning, but I was compelled to it by conscience. Fifty 
years ago, madam, on this day, I committed a breach of filial 30 
piety. My father had been in the habit of attending Uttoxeter 
market, and opening a stall there for the sale of his Books. Con- 
fined by indisposition, he desired me, that day, to go and attend 



148 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

the stall in his place. My pride prevented me ; I gave my father 
a refusal. — And now to-day I have been to Uttoxeter ; I went into 
the market at the time of business, uncovered my head, and stood 
with it bare, for an hour, on the spot where my father's stall used 
5 to stand. In contrition I stood, and I hope the penance was 
expiatory." 

Who does not figure to himself this spectacle, amid 
the "rainy weather, and the sneers," or wonder, "of the 
bystanders"? The memory of old Michael Johnson, 

10 rising from the far distance; sad-beckoning in the " moon- 
light of memory:" how he had toiled faithfully hither and 
thither; patiently among the lowest of the low; been 
buffeted and beaten down, yet ever risen again, ever 
tried it anew — And oh! when the wearied old man, as 

15 Bookseller, or Hawker, or Tinker, or whatsoever it was 
that Fate had reduced him to, begged help of thee for 
one day, — how savage, diabolic, was that mean Vanity, 
which answered, No! He sleeps now; after life's fitful 
fever, he sleeps: but thou, O Merciless, how now wilt 

20 thou still the sting of that remembrance? — The picture 
of Samuel Johnson standing bareheaded in the market 
there, is one of the grandest and saddest we can paint. 
Repentance! Repentance! he proclaims, as with passion- 
ate sobs: but only to the ear of Heaven, if Heaven will 

25 give him audience: the earthly ear and heart, that should 
have heard it, are now closed, unresponsive forever. 

That this so keen-loving, soft-trembling Affectionate- 
ness, the inmost essence of his being, must have looked 
forth, in one form or another, through Johnson's whole 

30 character, practical and intellectual, modifying both, is 



BOS well's life of JOHNSON 1 49 

not to be doubted. Yet through what singular distor- 
tions and superstitions, moping melanchoHes, blind 
habits, whims about "entering with the right foot," and 
"touching every post as he walked along:" and all the 
other mad chaotic lumber of a brain that, with sun- 5 
clear intellect, hovered forever on the verge of insanity, — 
must that same inmost essence have looked forth; un- 
recognizable to all but the most observant! Accordingly 
it was not recognized; Johnson passed not for a fine 
nature, but for a dull, almost brutal one. Might not, 10 
for example, the first-fruit of such a Lovingness, coupled 
with his quick Insight, have been expected to be a pe- 
culiarly courteous demeanor as man among men? In 
Johnson's "Politeness," which he often, to the wonder 
of some, asserted to be great, there was indeed some- 15 
what that needed explanation. Nevertheless, if he in- 
sisted always on handing lady-visitors to their carriage; 
though with the certainty of collecting a mob of gazers 
in Fleet Street, — as might well be, the beau having on, by 
way of court dress, "his rusty brown morning suit, a 20 
pair of old shoes for slippers, a little shriveled wig stick- 
ing on the top of his head, and the sleeves of his shirt and 
the knees of his breeches hanging loose:" — in all this 
we can see the spirit of true Politeness, only shining 
through a strange medium. Thus again, in his apart- 25 
ments, at one time, there were unfortunately no chairs. 
"A gentleman who frequently visited him whilst writ- 
ing his Idlers, constantly found him at his desk, sitting 
on one with three legs; and on rising from it, he remarked 
that Johnson never forgot its defects; but would either 30 



150 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

hold it in his hand, or place it with great composure 
against some support; taking no notice of its imperfec- 
tion to his visitor," — who meanwhile, we suppose, sat 
upon foHos, or in the sartorial fashion. "It was remark- 
5 able in Johnson," continues Miss Reynolds {'' Renny 
dear'^), "that no external circumstances ever prompted 
him to make any apology, or to seem even sensible of 
their existence. Whether this was the effect of philo- 
sophic pride, or of some partial notion of his respecting 

10 high-breeding, is doubtful." That it was, for one thing, 
the effect of genuine Politeness, is nowise doubtful. Not 
of the Pharisaical Brummellean Politeness, which would 
suffer crucifixion rather than ask twice for soup: but the 
noble universal PoUteness of a man that knows the dig- 

15 nity of men, and feels his own; such as may be seen in 
the patriarchal bearing of an Indian Sachem; such as 
Johnson himself exhibited, when a sudden chance 
brought him into dialogue with his king. To us, with 
our view of the man, it nowise appears "strange" that 

20 he should have boasted himself cunning in the laws of 
politeness; nor "stranger still," habitually attentive to 
practice them. 

More legibly is this influence of the Loving heart to 
be traced in his intellectual character. What, indeed, 

2$ is the beginning of intellect, the first inducement to the 
exercise thereof, but attraction towards somewhat, affec- 
tion for it? Thus, too, who ever saw, or will see, any 
true talent, not to speak of genius, the foundation of 
which is not goodness, love? From Johnson's strength 

30 of Affection we deduce many of his intellectual peculiari- 



BOSWELL^S LIFE OF JOHNSON 151 

ties; especially that threatening array of perversions, 
known under the name of ''Johnson's Prejudices." 
Looking well into the root from which these sprung, we 
have long ceased to view them with hostihty, can pardon 
and reverently pity them. Consider with what force 5 
early-imbibed opinions must have clung to a soul of this 
Affection. Those evil-famed Prejudices of his, that 
Jacobitism, Church-of-Englandism, hatred of the Scotch, 
belief in Witches, and such like, what were they but the 
ordinary beliefs of well-doing, well-meaning provincial 10 
Englishmen in that day? First gathered by his Father's 
hearth; round the kind "country fires," of native Stafford- 
shire; they grew with his growth and strengthened with 
his strength: they were hallowed by fondest sacred 
recollections; to part. with them was parting with his 15 
heart's blood. If the man. who has no strength of Af- 
fection, strength of Belief, have no strength of Preju- 
dice, let him thank Heaven for it; but to himself take 
small thanks. 

Melancholy it was, indeed, that the noble Johnson 20 
could not work himself loose from these adhesions; that 
he could only purify them, and wear them with some 
nobleness. Yet let us understand how they grew out 
from the very center of his being: nay, moreover, how 
they came to cohere in him with what formed the busi- 25 
ness and worth of his Life, the sum of his whole Spiritual 
Endeavor. For it is on the same ground that he became 
throughout an Edifier and Repairer, not, as the others 
of his make were, a Puller-down; that in an age of uni- 
versal Skepticism, England was still to produce its Be- 30 



152 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

liever. Mark, too, his candor even here; while a Dr. 
Adams, with placid surprise, asks, "Have we not evi- 
dence enough of the soul's immortality?" Johnson 
answers, "I wish for more." 
5 But the truth is, in Prejudice, as in all things, John- 
son was the product of England; one of those good yeo- 
men whose Hmbs were made in England: alas, the last 
of such Invincibles, their day being now done ! His cul- 
ture is wholly EngHsh; that not of a Thinker but of a 

10 "Scholar:" his interests are wholly EngHsh; he sees and 
knows nothing but England; he is the John Bull of 
Spiritual Europe: let him Hve, love him, as he was and 
could not but be ! Pitiable it is, no doubt, that a Samuel 
Johnson must confute Hume's irrehgious Philosophy by 

15 some "story from a Clergyman of the Bishoprick of 
Durham;" should see nothing in the great Frederick 
but "Voltaire's lackey;" in Voltaire himself but a man 
acerrimi ingenii, paucarum literarum; in Rousseau but 
one worthy to be hanged; and in the universal, long- 

20 prepared, inevitable Tendency of European Thought 
but a green-sick milkmaid's crotchet of, for variety's 
sake, "milking the Bull." Our good, dear John! Ob- 
serve, too, what it is that he sees in the city of Paris: no 
feeblest glimpse of those D'Alemberts and Diderots, or 

25 of the strange questionable work they did; solely some 
Benedictine Priests, to talk kitchen-latin with them about 
Editiones Principes . ' ' MonsJi eer Nongtong pa w! ' ' — Our 
dear, foolish John: yet is there a lion's heart within 
him! Pitiable all these things were, we say; yet nowise 

30 inexcusable; nay, as basis or as foil to much else that was 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON 1 53 

in Johnson, almost venerable. Ought we not, indeed, to 
honor England, and English Institutions and Way of 
Life, that they could still equip such a man; could fur- 
nish him in heart and head to be a Samuel Johnson, and 
yet to love them, and unyieldingly fight for them? What 5 
truth and living vigor must such Institutions once have 
had, when, in the middle of the Eighteenth century, there 
was still enough left in them for this! 

It is worthy of note that, in our Httle British isle, the 
two grand Antagonisms of Europe should have stood 10 
embodied, under their very highest concentration, in two 
men produced simultaneously among ourselves. Samuel 
Johnson and David Hume, as was observed, were chil- 
dren nearly of the same year: through life they were spec- 
tators of the same Life-movement; often inhabitants of 15 
the same city. Greater contrast, in all things, between 
two great men, could not be. Hume, well-born, com- 
petently provided for, whole in body and mind, of his 
own determination forces a way into Literature : Johnson, 
poor, moonstruck, diseased, forlorn, is forced into it 20 
"with the bayonet of necessity at his back." And what 
a part did they severally play there ! As Johnson became 
the father of all succeeding Tories; so was Hume the 
father of all succeeding Whigs, for his own Jacobitism 
was but an accident, as worthy to be named prejudice as 25 
any of Johnson's. Again, if Johnson's culture was ex- 
clusively EngHsh; Hume's in Scotland, became Euro- 
pean; — for which reason, too, we find his influence spread 
deeply over all quarters of Europe, traceable deeply in 
all speculation, French, German, as well as domestic; 30 



154 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

while Johnson's name, out of England, is hardly any- 
where to be met with. In spiritual stature they are 
almost equal; both great, among the greatest; yet how 
unHke in likeness! Hume has the widest, methodiz- 
5 ing, comprehensive eye; Johnson the keenest for per- 
spicacity and minute detail : so had, perhaps chiefly, their 
education ordered it. Neither of the two rose into 
Poetry; yet both to some approximation thereof: Hume 
to something of an epic clearness and method, as in his 

10 delineation of the Commonwealth Wars; Johnson to 
many a deep lyric tone of plaintiveness and impetuous 
graceful power, scattered over his fugitive compositions. 
Both, rather to the general surprise, had a certain rugged 
humor shining through their earnestness: the indication, 

IS indeed, that they were earnest men, and had subdued 
their wild world into a kind of temporary home and safe 
dwelling. Both were, by principle and habit, Stoics: 
yet Johnson with the greater merit, for he alone had very 
much to triumph over; farther, he alone ennobled his 

2o Stoicism into Devotion. To Johnson Life was as a 
Prison, to be endured with heroic faith; to Hume it was 
little more than a foolish Bartholomew-Fair Show-booth, 
with the foolish crowdings and elbowings of which it 
was not worth while to quarrel; the whole would break 

25 up, and be at liberty, so soon. Both realized the highest 
task of manhood, that of living like men; each died not 
unfitly, in his way: Hume as one, with factitious, half- 
false gayety, taking leave of what was itself wholly but 
a Lie: Johnson as one, with awe-struck, yet resolute and 

30 piously expectant heart, taking leave of a Reality, to 



BOSWELL's life of JOHNSON 1 55 

enter a Reality still higher. Johnson had the harder 
problem of it, from first to last: whether, with some hesi- 
tation, we can admit that he was intrinsically the better- 
gifted, — may remain undecided. 

These two men now rest; the one in Westminster 5 
Abbey here; the other in the Calton Hill Churchyard of 
Edinburgh. Through Life they did not meet: as con- 
trasts, "Uke in unlike," love each other; so might they 
two have loved, and communed kindly, — had not the 
terrestrial dross and darkness that was in them with- 10 
stood! One day, their spirits, what Truth was in each, 
will be found working, living in harmony and free union, 
even here below. They were the two half-men of their 
time: whoso should combine the intrepid Candor and 
decisive scientific Clearness of Hume, with the Reverence, 15 
the Love, and devout Humility of Johnson, were the 
whole man of a new time. Till such whole man arrive for 
us, and the distracted time admit of such, might the 
Heavens but bless poor England with half-men worthy 
to tie the shoe-latchets of these, resembling these even zo 
from afar! Be both attentively regarded, let the true 
Effort of both prosper; — and for the present, both take 
our affectionate farewell! 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 

[Thomas Babington Macaulay was born in 1800 at Rothley 
Temple, Leicestershire. He was a child of remarkable precocity 
both in literature and in English composition. In 1 818 he entered 
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he twice won first honors in 
the EngUsh prize-poem contest. In 1822 he was graduated and 
two years later was chosen a fellow of Trinity, when he began to 
devote himself to literature. For a short time he contributed 
articles to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. His famous essay on 
Milton appeared in 1825, in the Edinburgh Review, the great 
Whig periodical to which Macaulay was a prominent contributor 
for the next twenty years. In 1830 he entered Parliament and 
ardently shared in the reform movement. From 1834 to 1838 he 
was in India as a member of the Supreme Council. On his re- 
turn to England he again entered Parliament and for a time was 
active in public affairs. He was raised to the peerage in 1857. 
His Lays of Ancient Rome appeared in 1842, and the next year 
three volumes of Essays. The work to which Macaulay's later 
years were devoted was the History of England from the Accession 
of fames II. Two volumes were pubUshed in 1848, and two more 
in 1855. Volume five of the series was published posthumously. 
Macaulay died in 1859.] 

Macaulay never regarded himself as a critic of litera- 
ture in the special sense. He had not the mind of a 
critic, the judicial temper, the detachment, the serious, 
philosophical view of life. Nor had he a method of 
criticism, as Carlyle, Arnold, and Pater had. His am- 
bition as a writer and his greatest labor were given to 
his History, upon which he confidently invited the judg- 
ment of posterity. His essays, on the contrary, he wrote 
156 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 1 57 

with no thought of a generation beyond his own. "They 
are not expected to be highly finished," he said of them. 
"Their natural life is only six weeks." His attitude was 
always that of a reviewer; but Macaulay was not an ordi- 
nary reviewer because he was not a commonplace man. 
He possessed great gifts supported by a temperament 
that insured popularity. Together with an amazing 
range of reading, a magical memory, and great industry, 
he had a sterling, robust character, manly common sense, 
and limitless confidence in his own opinions and powers. 
These characteristics found expression in a style of in- 
comparable effectiveness, if style be regarded as a me- 
dium of immediate appeal. Essays, therefore, which were 
thought of as fugitive, have survived to the present time 
with scarcely diminished vitality. 

The essay on Byron is typical of Macaulay's method 
of dealing with a literary subject. The obvious, super- 
ficial aspects of Byron and his poetry are presented, — 
aspects which indeed are not the less true because they 
are apparent. It is the authentic Byronic portrait as it 
was imagined by the British public of Macaulay's day. 
There is no effort to see below the surface, to interrogate 
causes, to reach final estimates according to the ideals 
of serious criticism. 

Macaulay's manner is dogmatic. It is the manner of 
the school of Jeffrey, who magisterially decided things 
literary in terms of his own taste and temperament. 
When Macaulay discusses an author or his work, he 
generally begins with an a priori dictum to which his 
facts must apply. This is the method in the Milton, the 
earliest of his literary essays; and it is the method also 
in the Leigh Hunt, and the Madame D^ArUay which are 
among the last. Byron's Hfe is presented on the basis 
that it "was a strange union of opposite extremes"; 
while his poetry is examined from the proposition that 
"he never wrote without some reference, direct or in- 



158 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

direct, to himself." Such a method has obvious merits. 
It is direct, positive, unequivocal; it leaves the reader 
with clear, easily remembered impressions; in matters of 
judgment and taste it decides upon a basis of reason and 
common sense. But it has also obvious defects. It deals 
in half-truths and leads to assertions that require quali- 
fication; it treats in an analytic, sweeping fashion sub- 
jects that demand careful sifting and judicious handling. 
Macaulay's attention to broad effects and neglect of 
nice distinctions are nowhere more marked than in his 
style. For this reason its special qualities do not appear 
in the diction, which is indifferent to elusive connotations. 
One seldom finds in his essays the eclectic word as in 
Pater, or the luminous phrase as in Carlyle. It is in 
sentence structure, manner of grouping and accumulat- 
ing details, and in swift, bold movement that Macaulay's 
distinction as a stylist is to be found. The frequency of 
the balanced and parallel forms in phrase, sentence, or 
paragraph, indicates the shape in which he saw his 
material. Mention of a name or a quality suggested to 
Macaulay scores of comparisons and contrasts. "Let 
me give a few instances," he says: "Every school boy 
knows," — and thereupon he floods his page with instance 
upon instance. This manner when carried to excess 
suffers from hardness, monotony,^ and over-emphasis. 
Nevertheless Macaulay's style, even in his essays where it 
is most exposed to censure, is rarely ineffective, because 
it always contains the vitalizing virtues of clearness, force, 
and sincerity. Though his thought is never deep, it is 
never turbid; and in all his life he never wBote a languid 
or an insincere sentence. This is why his style has won 
for him a popularity as a serious writer unsurpassed in 
his own or in later generations. 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 1 59 



MOORE'S LIFE OF LORD BYRON 

We have read this book with the greatest pleasure. 
Considered merely as a composition, it deserves to be 
classed among the best specimens of English prose which 
our age has produced. It contains, indeed, no single 
passage equal to two or three which we could select from 5 
the Life of Sheridan. But, as a whole, it is immeasurably 
superior to that work. The style is agreeable, clear, and 
manly, and when it rises into eloquence, rises without 
effort or ostentation. Nor is the matter inferior to the 
manner. It would be difficult to name a book which ex- 10 
hibits more kindness, fairness, and modesty. It has evi- 
dently been written, not for the purpose of showing, what, 
however, it often shows, how well its author can write, 
but for the purpose of vindicating, as far as truth will 
permit, the memory of a celebrated man who can no 15 
longer vindicate himself. Mr. Moore never thrusts him- 
self between Lord Byron and the public. With the 
strongest temptations to egotism, he has said no more 
about himself than the subject absolutely required. 

A great part, indeed the greater part, of these volumes 20 
consists of extracts from the Letters and Journals of Lord 
Byron; and it is difficult to speak too highly of the skill 
which has been shown in the selection and arrangement. 
We will not say that we have not occasionally remarked 
in these two large quartos an anecdote which should have 25 
been omitted, a letter which should have been suppressed, 
a name which should have been concealed by asterisks, 



l6o NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

or asterisks which do not answer the purpose of conceal- 
ing the name. But it is impossible, on a general survey, 
to deny that the task has been executed with great judg- 
ment and great humanity. When we consider the Hfe 
5 which Lord Byron had led, his petulance, his irritability, 
and his communicativeness, we cannot but admire the 
dexterity with which Mr. Moore has contrived to ex- 
hibit so much of the character and opinions of his friend, 
with so little pain to the feelings of the living. 

10 The extracts from the journals and correspondence of 
Lord Byron are in the highest degree valuable, not merely 
on account of the information which they contain re- 
specting the distinguished man by whom they were 
written, but on account also of their rare merit as com- 

15 positions. The Letters, at least those which were sent 
from Italy, are among the best in our language. They 
are less affected than those of Pope and Walpole; they 
have more matter in them than those of Cowper. Know- 
ing that many of them were not written merely for the 

20 person to whom they were directed, but were general 
epistles, meant to be read by a large circle, we expected 
to find them clever and spirited, but deficient in ease. 
We looked with vigilance for instances of stiffness in the 
language and awkardness in the transitions. We have 

25 been agreeably disappointed; and we must confess that, 
if the epistolary style of Lord Byron was artificial, it 
was a rare and admirable instance of that highest art 
which cannot be distinguished from nature. 

Of the deep and painful interest w^hich this book ex- 

30 cites no abstract can give a just notion. So sad and dark 



LIFE or LORD BYRON l6l 

a story is scarcely to be found in any work of fiction; and 
we are little disposed to envy the moralist who can read 
it without being softened. 

The pretty fable by which the Duchess of Orleans il- 
lustrated the character of her son the Regent rnight, with 5 
little change, be applied to Byron. All the fairies, save 
one, had been bidden to his cradle. All the gossips had 
been profuse of their gifts. One had bestowed nobility, 
another genius, a third beauty. The malignant elf who 
had been uninvited came last, and, unable to reverse 10 
what her sisters had done for their favorite, had mixed 
up a curse with every blessing. In the rank of Lord 
Byron, in his understanding, in his character, in his very 
person, there was a strange union of opposite extremes. 
He was born to all that men covet and admire. But in 15 
every one of those eminent advantages which he pos- 
sessed over others was mingled something of misery and 
debasement. He was sprung from a house, ancient in- 
deed and noble, but degraded and impoverished by a 
series of crimes and follies which had attained a scan- 20 
dalous publicity. The kinsman whom he succeeded had 
died poor, and, but for merciful judges, would have died 
upon the gallows. The young peer had great intellectual 
powers; yet there was an unsound part in his mind. 
He had naturally a generous and feeling heart: but his 25 
temper was wayward and irritable. He had a head 
which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity 
of which the beggars in the streets mimicked. Dis- 
tinguished at once by the strength and by the weakness 
of his intellect, affectionate yet perverse, a poor lord, 30 
Prose — II 



1 62 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

and a handsome cripple, he required, if ever man re- 
quired, the firmest and the most judicious training. 
But, capriciously as nature had dealt with him, the parent 
to whom the office of forming his character was intrusted 
5 was more capricious still. She passed from paroxysms 
of rage to paroxysms of tenderness. At one time she 
stifled him with her caresses: at another time she in- 
sulted his deformity. He came into the world; and the 
world treated him as his mother had treated him, some- 

lo times with fondness, sometimes with cruelty, never with 
justice. It indulged him without discrimination, and 
punished him without discrimination. He was truly a 
spoiled child, not merely the spoiled child of his parent, 
but the spoiled child of nature, the spoiled child of for- 

15 tune, the spoiled child of fame, the spoiled child of 
society. His first poems were received with a contempt 
which, feeble as they were, they did not absolutely de- 
serve. The poem which he published on his return from 
his travels was, on the other hand, extolled far above 

20 its merit. At twenty-four he found himself on the highest 
pinnacle of literary fame, with Scott, Wordsworth, 
Southey, and a crowd of other distinguished writers be- 
neath his feet. There is scarcely an instance in history 
of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence. 

25 Everything that could stimulate, and everything that 
could gratify the strongest propensities of our nature, the 
gaze of a hundred drawing-rooms, the acclamations of 
the whole nation, the applause of applauded men, the 
love of lovely women, all this world and the glory of it 

30 were at once offered to a youth to whom nature had 



LIFE or LORD BYRON 1 63 

given violent passions, and to whom education had never 
taught to control them. He lived as many men live who 
have no similar excuse to plead for their faults. But his 
countrymen and his countrywomen would love him and 
admire him. They were resolved to see in his excesses 5 
only the flash and outbreak of that same fiery mind 
which glowed in his poetry. He attacked religion; yet 
in rehgious circles his name was mentioned with fond- 
ness, and in many rehgious publications his works were 
censured with singular tenderness. He lampooned the 10 
Prince Regent; yet he could not alienate the Tories. 
Everything, it seemed, was to be forgiven to youth, rank, 
and genius. 

Then came the reaction. Society, capricious in its 
indignation as it had been capricious in its fondness, flew 1 5 
into a rage with its forward and petted darling. He had 
been worshiped with an irrational idolatry. He was 
persecuted with an irrational fury. Much has been 
written about those unhappy domestic occurrences which 
decided the fate of his Hfe. Yet nothing is, nothing ever 20 
was, positively known to the pubhc, but this, that he 
quarreled with his lady, and that she refused to live 
with him. There have been hints in abundance, and 
shrugs and shakings of the head, and "Well, well, we 
know," and "We could an if we would," and "If we 25 
list to speak," and "There be that might an they Hst." 
But we are not aware that there is before the world sub- 
stantiated by credible, or even by tangible evidence, a 
single fact indicating that Lord Byron was more to blame 
than any other man who is on bad terms with his wife. 30 



164 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

The professional men whom Lady Byron consulted were 
undoubtedly of opinion that she ought not to live with 
her husband. But it is to be remembered that they 
formed that opinion without hearing both sides. We 
5 do not say, we do not mean to insinuate, that Lady 
Byron was in any respect to blame. We think that 
those who condemn her on the evidence which is now 
before the public are as rash as those who condemn her 
husband. We will not pronounce any judgment, we 

10 cannot, even in our own minds, form any judgment, on 
a transaction which is so imperfectly known to us. It 
would have been well if, at the time of the separation, 
all those who knew as little about the matter then as we 
know about it now had shown the forbearance which, 

15 under such circumstances, is but common justice. 

We know no spectacle so ridicuous as the British pub- 
lic in one of its periodical fits of morality. In general, 
elopements, divorces, and family quarrels, pass with 
little notice. We read the scandal, talk about it for a 

20 day, and forget it. But once in six or seven years our 
virtue becomes outrageous. We cannot suffer the laws 
of religion and decency to be violated. We must make 
a stand against vice. We must teach libertines that the 
English people appreciate the importance of domestic 

25 ties. Accordingly some unfortunate man, in no respect 
more depraved than hundreds whose offenses have been 
treated with lenity, is singled out as an expiatory sacrifice. 
If he has children, they are to be taken from him. If 
he has a profession, he is to be driven from it. He is 

30 cut by the higher orders, and hissed by the lower. He 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 1 65 

is, in truth, a sort of whipping-boy, by whose vicarious 
agonies all the other transgressors of the same class are, 
it is supposed, sufficiently chastised. We reflect very 
complacently on our own severity, and compare with 
great pride the high standard of morals established in 5 
England with the Parisian laxity. At length our anger 
is satiated. Our victim is ruined and broken-hearted. 
And our virtue goes quietly to sleep for seven years more. 
It is clear that those vices which destroy domestic hap- 
piness ought to be as much as possible repressed. It is 10 
equally clear that they cannot be repressed by penal legis- 
lation. It is therefore right and desirable that public 
opinion should be directed against them. But it should 
be directed against them uniformly, steadily, and tem- 
perately, not by sudden fits and starts. There should 15 
be one weight and one measure. Decimation is always an 
objectionable mode of punishment. It is the resource 
of judges too indolent and hasty to investigate facts and 
to discriminate nicely between shades of guilt. It is an 
irrational practice, even when adopted by military 20 
tribunals. When adopted by the tribunal of public 
opinion, it is infinitely more irrational. It is good that 
a certain portion of disgrace should constantly attend " 
on certain bad actions. But it is not good that the 
offenders should merely have to stand the risks of a 25 
lottery of infamy, that ninety-nine out of every hundred 
should escape, and that the hundredth, perhaps the most 
innocent of the hundred, should pay for all. We re- 
member to have seen a mob assembled in Lincoln's 
Inn to hoot a gentleman against whom the most oppres- 30 



1 66 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

sive proceeding known to the English law was then in 
progress. He was hooted because he had been an un- 
faithful husband, as if some of the most popular men of 
the age, Lord Nelson for example, had not been un- 
5 faithful husbands. We remember a still stronger case. 
Will posterity believe that, in an age in which men whose 
gallantries were universally known, and had been legally 
proved, filled some of the highest offices in the state 
and in the army, presided at the meetings of religious 

10 and benevolent institutions, were the delight of every 
society, and the favorites of the multitude, a crowd of 
moralists went to the theater, in order to pelt a poor actor 
for disturbing the conjugal felicity of an alderman? 
What there was in the circumstances either of the of- 

15 fender or of the sufferer to vindicate the zeal of the 
audience, we could never conceive. It has never been 
supposed that the situation of an actor is peculiarly 
favorable to the rigid virtues, or that an alderman enjoys 
any special immunity from injuries such as that which 

20 on this occasion roused the anger of the public. But 
such is the justice of mankind. 

In these cases the punishments was excessive; but the 
offense was known and proved. The case of Lord By- 
ron was harder. True Jedwood justice was dealt out to 

25 him. First came the execution, then the investigation, 
and last of all, or rather not at all, the accusation. The 
public, without knowing anything whatever about the 
transactions in his family, flew into a violent passion 
with him, and proceeded to invent stories which might 

30 justify its anger. Ten or twenty different accounts of the 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 1 67 

separation, inconsistent with each other, with them- 
selves, and with common sense, circulated at the same 
time. What evidence there might be for any one of these, 
the virtuous people who repeated them neither knew nor 
cared. For in fact these stories were not the causes, but 5 
the effects of the public indignation. They resembled 
those loathsome slanders which Lewis Goldsmith, and 
other abject libelers of the same class, were in the habit 
of publishing about Bonaparte; such as that he poisoned 
a girl with arsenic when he was at the military school, 10 
that he hired a grenadier to shoot Dessaix at Marengo, 
that he filled St. Cloud with all the pollutions of Capreae. 
There was a time when anecdotes like these obtained 
some credence from persons who, hating the French 
emperor without knowing why, were eager to believe any- 15 
thing which might justify their hatred. Lord Byron 
fared in the same way. His countrymen were in a bad 
humor with him. His writings and his character had 
lost the charm of novelty. He had been guilty of the 
offense which, of all offenses, is punished most severely; 20 
he had been over- praised; he had excited too warm an 
interest; and the public, with its usual justice, chastised 
him for its own folly. The attachments of the multitude 
bear no small resemblance to those of the wanton en- 
chantress in the Arabian Tales, who, when the forty 25 
days of her fondness were over, was not content with 
dismissing her lovers, but condemned them to expiate, 
in loathsome shapes and under cruel penances, the crime 
of having once pleased her too well. 

The obloquy which Byron had to endure was such as 30 



1 68 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

might well have shaken a more constant mind. The 
newspapers were filled with lampoons. The theaters 
shook with execrations. He was excluded from circles 
where he had lately been the observed of all observers. 
5 All those creeping things that riot in the decay of nobler 
natures hastened to their repast; and they were right; 
they did after their kind. It is not every day that the 
savage envy of aspiring dunces is gratified by the agonies 
of such a spirit, and the degradation of such a name. 

10 The unhappy man left his country for ever. The howl 
of contumely followed him across the sea, up the Rhine, 
over the Alps; it gradually waxed fainter; it died away; 
those who had raised it began to ask each other, what, 
after all, was the matter about which they had been so 

15 clamorous, and wished to invite back the criminal whom 
they had just chased from them. His poetry became more 
popular than it had ever been; and his complaints were 
read with tears by thousands and tens of thousands who 
had never seen his face. 

20 He had fixed his home on the shores of the Adriatic, 
in the most picturesque and interesting of cities, beneath 
the brightest of skies and by the brightest of seas. Cen- 
soriousness was not the vice of the neighbors whom he 
had chosen. They were a race corrupted by a bad 

25 government and a bad religion, long renowned for skill 
in the arts of voluptuousness, and tolerant of all the 
caprices of sensuality. From the public opinion of the 
country of his adoption, he had nothing to dread. With 
the pubhc opinion of the country of his birth he was at 

30 open war. He plunged into wild and desperate excesses. 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 1 69 

ennobled by no generous or tender sentiment. From his 
Venetian harem he sent forth volume after volume, full 
of eloquence, of wit, of pathos, of ribaldry, and of bitter 
disdain. His health sank under the effects of his in- 
temperance. His hair turned gray. His food ceased 5 
to nourish him. A hectic fever withered him up. It 
seemed that his body and mind were about to perish to- 
gether. 

From this wretched degradation he was in some 
measure rescued by a connection, culpable indeed, yet 10 
such as, if it were judged by the standard of morahty 
established in the country where he lived, might be called 
virtuous. But an imagination polluted by vice, a temper 
embittered by misfortune, and a frame habituated to 
the fatal excitement of intoxication, prevented him from 15 
fully enjoying the happiness which he might have de- 
rived from the purest and most tranquil of his many 
attachments. Midnight draughts of ardent spirits and 
Rhenish wines had begun to work the ruin of his fine 
intellect. His verse lost much of the energy and con- 20 
densation which had distinguished it. But he would not 
resign, without a struggle, the empire which he had ex- 
ercised over the men of his generation. A new dream of 
ambition arose before him; to be the chief of a literary 
party; to be the great mover of an intellectual revolu- 25 
tion; to guide the public mind of England from his 
Italian retreat, as Voltaire had guided the public mind 
of France from the villa of Ferney. With this hope, as 
it should seem, he established the Liberal. But, power- 
fully as he had affected the imaginations of his contem- 30 



170 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

poraries, he mistook his own powers if he hoped to direct 
their opinions; and he still more grossly mistook his own 
disposition, if he thought that he could long act in con- 
cert with other men of letters. The plan failed, and 
5 failed ignominiously. Angry with himself, angry with 
his coadjutors, he reHnquished it, and turned to another 
project, the last and noblest of his life. 

A nation, once the first among the nations, preeminent 
in knowledge, preeminent in military glory, the cradle 

10 of philosophy, of eloquence, and of the fine arts, had 
been for ages bowed down under a cruel yoke. All the 
vices which oppression generates, the abject vices which 
it generates in those who submit to it, the ferocious vices 
which it generates in those who struggle against it, had 

15 deformed the character of that miserable race. The 
valor which had won the great battle of human civiliza- 
tion, which had saved Europe, which had subjugated 
Asia, lingered only among pirates and robbers. The 
ingenuity, once so conspicuously displayed in every de- 

20 partment of physical and moral science, had been de- 
praved into a timid and servile cunning. On a sudden 
this degraded people had risen on their oppressors. 
Discountenanced or betrayed by the surrounding poten- 
tates, they had found in themselves something of that 

25 which might well supply the place of all foreign assist- 
ance, something of the energy of their fathers. 

As a man of letters. Lord Byron could not but be inter- 
ested in the event of this contest. His political opinions, 
though, like all his opinions, unsettled, leaned strongly 

30 towards the side of liberty. He had assisted the Itahan 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 171 

insurgents with his purse, and if their struggle against the 
Austrian government had been prolonged, would prob- 
ably have assisted them with his sword. But to Greece 
he was attached by peculiar ties. He had when young 
resided in that country. Much of his most splendid and 5 
popular poetry had been inspired by its scenery and by 
its history. Sick of inaction, degraded in his own eyes 
by his private vices and by his Hterary failures, pining 
for untried excitement and honorable distinction, he 
carried his exhausted body and his wounded spirit to 10 
the Grecian camp. 

His conduct in his new situation showed so much 
vigor and good sense as to justify us in believing that, 
if his life had been prolonged, he might have distinguished 
himself as a soldier and a poHtician. But pleasure and 15 
sorrow had done the work of seventy years upon his 
delicate frame. The hand of death was upon him; he 
knew it; and the only wish which he uttered was that 
he might die sword in hand. 

This was denied to him. Anxiety, exertion, exposure, 20 
and those fatal stimulants which had become indispen- 
sable to him, soon stretched him on a sick bed, in a 
strange land, amidst strange faces, without one human 
being that he loved near him. There, at thirty-six, the 
most celebated EngHshman of the nineteenth century 25 
closed his briUiant and miserable career. 

We cannot even now retrace those events without feel- 
ing something of what was felt by the nation, when it 
was first known that the grave had closed over so much 
sorrow and so much glory; something of what was felt 30 



172 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

by those who saw the hearse, with its long train of 
coaches, turn slowly northward, leaving behind it that 
cemetery which had been consecrated by the dust of so 
many great poets, but of which the doors were closed 
5 against all that remained of Byron. We well remember 
on that day, rigid moralists could not refrain from weep- 
ing for one so young, so illustrious, so unhappy, gifted 
with such rare gifts, and tried by such strong tempta- 
tions. It is unnecessary to make any reflections. The 

lo history carries its moral with it. Our age has indeed 
been fruitful of warnings to the eminent, and of conso- 
lations to the obscure. Two men have died within our 
recollection, who, at a time of life at which many people 
have hardly completed their education, had raised 

15 themselves, each in his own department, to the height 
of glory. One of them died at Longwood; the other at 
Missolonghi. 

It is always difficult to separate the literary character of 
a man who lives in our own time from his personal char- 

20 acter. It is peculiarly difficult to make this separation 
in the case of Lord Byron. For it is scarcely too much 
to say, that Lord Byron never wrote without some ref- 
erence, direct or indirect, to himself. The interest ex- 
cited by the events of his life mingles itself in our minds, 

25 and probably in the minds of almost all our readers, 
with the interest which properly belongs to his works. 
A generation must pass away before it will be possible 
to form a fair judgment of his books, considered merely 
as books. At present they are not merely books, but 

30" relics. We will, however, venture, though with un- 



LIFE or LORD BYRON 1 73 

feigned diffidence, to offer some desultory remarks on 
his poetry. 

His lot was cast in the time of a great literary revolu- 
tion. That poetical dynasty which had dethroned the 
successors of Shakespeare and Spenser was, in its turn, 5 
dethroned by a race who represented themselves as heirs 
of the ancient line, so long dispossessed by usurpers. 
The real nature of this revolution has not, we think, 
been comprehended by the great majority of those who 
concurred in it. 10 

Wherein especially does the poetry of our times differ 
from that of the last century? Ninety-nine persons out 
of a hundred would answer that the poetry of the last 
century was correct, but cold and mechanical, and that 
the poetry of our time, though wild and irregular, pre- 15 
sented far more vivid images, and excited the passions 
far more strongly than that of Parnell, of Addison, or 
of Pope. In the same manner we constantly hear it said, 
that the poets of the age of Elizabeth had far more 
genius, but far less correctness than those of the age of 20 
Anne. It seems to be taken for granted, that there is 
some incompatibility, some antithesis between correct- 
ness and creative power. We rather suspect that this 
notion arises merely from an abuse of words, and that 
it has been the parent of many of the fallacies which 25 
perplex the science of criticism. 

What is meant by correctness in poetry? If by cor- 
rectness be meant the conforming to rules which have 
their foundation in truth and in the principles of human 
nature, then correctness is only another name for ex- 30 



174 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

cellence. If by correctness be meant the conforming to 
rules purely arbitrary, correctness may be'another name 
for dullness and absurdity. 

A writer who describes visible objects falsely and vio- 
5 lates the propriety of character, a writer who makes the 
mountains "nod their drowsy heads" at night, or a 
dying man take leave of the world with a rant like that of 
Maximin, may be said in the high and just sense of the 
phrase, to write incorrectly. He violates the first great 

10 law of his art. His imitation is altogether unHke the 
thing imitated. The four poets who are most eminently 
free from incorrectness of this description are Homer, 
Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton. They are, therefore, 
in one sense, and that the best sense, the most correct of 

IS poets. 

When it is said that Virgil, though he had less genius 
than Homer, was a more correct writer, what sense is 
attached to the word correctness? Is it meant that the 
story of the jEneid is developed more skillfully than that 

2o of the Odyssey ? that the Roman describes the face of 
the external world, or the emotions of the mind, more 
accurately than the Greek ? that the characters of Achates 
and Mnestheus are more nicely discriminated, and more 
consistently supported, than those of Achilles, of Nestor, 

25 and of Ulysses? The fact incontestably is that, for every 
violation of the fundamental laws of poetry which can be 
found in Homer, it would be easy to find twenty in 
Virgil. 

Troilus and Cressida is perhaps of all the plays of 

30 Shakespeare that which is commonly considered as the 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 1 75 

most incorrect. Yet it seems to us infinitely more cor- 
rect, in the sound sense of the term, than what are called 
the most correct plays of the most correct dramatists. 
Compare it, for example, with the Iphigenie of Racine. 
We are sure that the Greeks of Shakespeare bear a far 5 
greater resemblance than the Greeks of Racine to the 
real Greeks who besieged Troy; and for this reason, that 
the Greeks of Shakespeare are human beings, and the 
Greeks of Racine mere names, mere words printed in 
capitals at the head of paragraphs of declamation. Ra- 10 
cine, it is true, would have shuddered at the thought of 
making a warrior at the siege of Troy quote Aristotle. 
But of what use is it to avoid a single anachronism, when 
the whole play is one anachronism, the sentiments and 
phrases of Versailles in the camp of Aulis? 15 

In the sense in which we are now using the word 
correctness, we think that Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Words- 
worth, Mr. Coleridge, are far more correct poets than 
those who are commonly extolled as the models of cor- 
rectness. Pope, for example, and Addison. The single 20 
description of a moonlight night in Pope's Iliad con- 
tains more inaccuracies than can be found in all the 
Excursion. There is not a single scene in Cato, in which 
all that conduces to poetical illusion, all the propriety 
of character, of language, of situation, is not more grossly 25 
violated than in any part of the Lay of the Last Minstrel. 
No man can possibly think that the Romans of Addison 
resemble the real Romans so closely as the moss-troopers 
of Scott resemble the real moss-troopers. Wat Tinlinn 
and William of Deloraine are not, it is true, persons of 30 



176 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

so much dignity as Cato. But the dignity of the persons 
represented has as Httle to do with the correctness of 
poetry as with the correctness of painting. We prefer 
a gypsy by Reynolds to his Majesty's head on a sign- 
5 post, and a Borderer by Scott to a Senator by Addison. 
In what sense, then, is the word correctness used by 
those who say, with the author of the Pursuits oj Lit- 
erature, that Pope was the most correct of EngHsh 
Poets, and that next to Pope came the late Mr. Giff ord ? 

10 What is the nature and value of that correctness, the 
praise of which is denied to Macbeth, to Lear, and to 
Othello, and given to Hoole's translations and to all 
the Seatonian prize poems? We can discover no eter- 
nal rule, no rule founded in reason and in the nature of 

15 things, which Shakespeare does not observe much more 
strictly than Pope. But if by correctness be meant the 
conforming to a narrow legislation which, while lenient 
to the mala in se, multiphes, without the shadow of a 
reason, the mala prohibita, if by correctness be meant 

20 a strict attention to certain ceremonious observances, 
which are no more essential to poetry than etiquette 
to good government, or than the washings of a Pharisee 
to devotion, then, assuredly. Pope may be a more cor- 
rect poet than Shakespeare; and, if the code were a 

25 little altered, Colley Gibber might be a more correct 
poet than Pope. But it may well be doubted whether 
this kind of correctness be a merit, nay, whether it be 
not an absolute fault. 

It would be amusing to make a digest of the irrational 

30 laws which bad critics have framed for the government 



LIFE or LORD BYRON 1 77 

of poets. First in celebrity and in absurdity stand the 
dramatic unities of place and time. No human being 
has ever been able to find anything that could, even by 
courtesy, be called an argument for these unities, ex- 
cept that they have been deduced from the general prac- 5 
tice of the Greeks. It requires no very profound ex- 
amination to discover that the Greek dramas, often 
admirable as compositions, are, as exhibitions of human 
character and human life, far inferior to the English 
plays of the age of Elizabeth. Every scholar knows 10 
that the dramatic part of the Athenian tragedies was 
at first suborbinate to the lyrical part. It would, there- 
fore, have been little less than a miracle if the laws of 
the Athenian stage had been found to suit plays in which 
there was no chorus. All the greatest masterpieces of ^5 
the dramatic art have been composed in the direct vio- 
lation of the unities, and could never have been com- 
posed if the unities had not been violated. It is clear, 
for example, that such a character as that of Hamlet 
could never have been developed within the limits to 20 
which Alfieri confined himself. Yet such was the rev- 
erence of literary men during the last century for these 
unities that Johnson, who, much to his honor, took the 
opposite side, was, as he says, "frightened at his own 
temerity," and "afraid to stand against the authorities 25 
which might be produced against him." 

There are other rules of the same kind without end. 
"Shakespeare," says Rymer, "ought not to have made 
Othello black; for the hero of a tragedy ought always 
to be white." "Milton," says another critic, "ought 30 
Prose — 1 2 



lyo NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

not to have taken Adam for his hero; for the hero of an 
epic poem ought always to be victorious." "Milton," 
says another, "ought not to have put so many similes 
into his first book; for the first book of an epic poem 
5 ought always to be the most unadorned. There are no 
similes in the first book of the Iliad.^' "Milton," says 
another, " ought not to have placed in an epic poem such 
lines as these: — 

" ' While thus I called, and strayed I knew not whither.'" 

10 And why not ? The critic is ready with a reason, a lady's 
reason. "Such lines," says he, "are not, it must be al- 
lowed, unpleasing to the ear; but the redundant syllable 
ought to be confined to the drama, and not admitted 
into epic poetry." As to the redundant syllable in heroic 

15 rhyme on serious subjects, it has been, from the time 
of Pope downward, proscribed by the general consent 
of all the correct school. No magazine would have ad- 
mitted so incorrect a couplet as that of Drayton: 

"As when we lived untouch'd ^vith these disgraces 
20 When as our kingdom was our dear embraces." 

Another law of heroic rhyme, which, fifty years ago, was 
considered as fundamental, was, that there should be 
a pause, a comma at least, at the end of every couplet. 
It was also provided that there should never be a full 
25 stop except at the end of a line. Well do we remember 
to have heard a most correct judge of poetry revile 
Mr. Rogers for the incorrectness of that most sweet and 
graceful passage, 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 1 79 

" Such grief was ours, — it seems but yesterday, — 
When in thy prime, wishing so much to stay, 
'Twas thine, Maria, thine without a sigh 
At midnight in a sister's arms to die. 

Oh thou wert lovely; lovely was thy frame, 5 

And pure thy spirit as from heaven it came ; 
And when recalled to join the blest above 
Thou diedst a victim to exceeding love, 
Nursing the young to health. In happier hours, 
When idle Fancy wove luxuriant flowers, lo 

Once in thy mirth thou badst me write on thee; 
And now I write what thou shalt never see." 

Sir Roger Newdigate is fairly entitled, we think, to be 
ranked among the great critics of this school. He made 
a law that none of the poems written for the prize which 15 
he established at Oxford should exceed fifty lines. This 
law seems to us to have at least as much foundation in 
reason as any of those which we have mentioned; nay, 
much more, for the world, we believe, is pretty well 
agreed in thinking that the shorter a prize poem is, the 20 
better. 

We do not see why we should not make a few more 
rules of the same kind; why we should not enact that the 
number of scenes in every act shall be three or some 
multiple of three, that the number of lines in every 25 
scene shall be an exact square, that the dramatis per- 
sona; shall never be more or fewer than sixteen, and 
that, in heroic rhymes, every thirty-sixth line shall have 
twelve syllables. If we were to lay down these canons, 
and to call Pope, Goldsmith, and Addison incorrect 30 
writers for not having complied with our whims, we 



l8o NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

should act precisely as those critics act who find incor- 
rectness in the magnificent imagery and the varied music 
of Coleridge and Shelley. 

The correctness which the last century prized so much 
5 resembles the correctness of those pictures of the garden 
of Eden which we see in old Bibles. We have an exact 
square, inclosed by the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, 
and Euphrates, each with a convenient bridge in the 
center, rectangular beds of flowers, a long canal, neatly 

lo bricked and railed in, the tree of knowledge, clipped hke 
one of the Hmes behind the Tuileries, standing in the 
center of the grand alley, the snake twined round it, 
the man on the right hand, the woman on the left, and 
the beasts drawn up in an exact circle round them. In 

15 one sense the picture is correct enough. That is to say, 
the squares are correct; the circles are correct; the man 
and the woman are in a most correct line with the tree; 
and the snake forms a most correct spiral. 

But if there were a painter so gifted that he could 

20 place on the canvas that glorious paradise, seen by the 
interior eye of him whose outward sight had failed with 
long watching and laboring for hberty and truth, if 
there were a painter who could set before us the mazes 
of the sapphire brook, the lake with its fringe of myrtles, 

25 the flowery meadows, the grottoes overhung by vines, 
the forests shining with Hesperian fruit and with the 
plumage of gorgeous birds, the massy shade of that 
nuptial bower which showered down roses on the sleep- 
ing lovers, what should we think of a connoisseur who 

30 should tell us that this painting, though finer than the 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON l8l 

absurd picture in the old Bible, was not so correct? 
Surely we should answer, It is both finer and more cor- 
rect; and it is finer because it is more correct. It is not 
made up of correctly drawn diagrams; but it is a correct 
painting, a worthy representation of that which it is 5 
intended to represent. 

It is not in the fine arts alone that this false correctness 
is prized by narrow-minded men, by men who cannot 
distinguish means from ends, or what is accidental from 
what is essential. M. Jourdain admired correctness in 10 
fencing. "You had no business to hit me then. You 
must never thrust in quart till you have thrust in tierce." 
M. Tomes liked correctness in medical practice. "I 
stand up for Artemius. That he killed his patient is 
plain enough. But still he acted quite according to rule. 15 
A man dead is a man dead; and there is an end of the 
matter. But if rules are to be broken, there is no say- 
ing what consequences may follow." We have heard 
of an old German officer, who was a great admirer of 
correctness in military operations. He used to revile 20 
Bonaparte for spoiling the science of war, which had 
been carried to such exquisite perfection by Marshal 
Daun. "In my youth we used to march and counter- 
march all the summer without gaining or losing a square 
league, and then we went into winter quarters. And 25 
now comes an ignorant, hot-headed young man, who 
flies about from Bologne to Ulm, and from Ulm to the 
middle of Moravia, and fights battles in December. 
The whole system of his tactics is monstrously incorrect." 
The world is of opinion, in spite of critics like these, 30 



152 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

that the end of fencing is to hit, that the end of medi- 
cine is to cure, that the end of war is to conquer, and 
that those means are the most correct which best ac- 
compKsh the ends. 
5 And has poetry no end, no eternal and immutable prin- 
ciples ? Is poetry like heraldry, mere matter of arbitrary 
regulation ? The heralds tell us that certain scutcheons 
and bearings denote certain conditions, and that to put 
colors on colors, or metals on metals, is false blazonry. 

10 If all this were reversed, if every coat of arms in Europe 
were new fashioned, if it were decreed that or should 
never be placed but on argent^ or argent but on or, that 
illegitimacy should be denoted by a lozenge, and widow- 
hood by a hend, the new science would be just as good 

15 as the old science, because both the new and old would 
be good for nothing. The mummery of Portcullis and 
Rouge Dragon, as it has no other value than that which 
caprice has assigned to it, may well submit to any laws 
which caprice may impose upon it. But it is not so 

20 with that great imitative art, to the power of which all 
ages, the rudest and the most enlightened, bear witness. 
Since its first great masterpieces were produced, every- 
thing that is changeable in this world has been changed. 
Civilization has been gained, lost, gained again. Reli- 

25 gions, the languages, and forms of government, and usages 
of private life, and modes of thinking, all have under- 
gone a succession of revolutions. Everything has passed 
away but the great features of nature, and the heart of 
man, and the miracles of that art which it is the office 

30 to reflect back the heart of man and the features of na- 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 1 83 

ture. Those two strange old poems, the wonder of ninety 
generations, still retain all their freshness. They still 
command the veneration of minds enriched by the 
Uterature of many nations and ages. They are still, 
even in wretched translations, the delight of school- 5 
boys. Having survived ten thousand capricious fashions, 
having seen successive codes of criticism become obso- 
lete, they still remain to us, immortal with the immor- 
tality of truth, the same when pursued in the study of 
an English scholar, as when they were first chanted at 10 
the banquets of the Ionian princes. 

Poetry is, as was said more than two thousand years 
ago, imitation. It is an art analogous in many respects 
to the art of painting, sculpture, and acting. The imi- 
tations of the painter, the sculptor, and the actor, are 15 
indeed, within certain limits, more perfect than those of 
the poet. The machinery which the poet employs 
consists merely of words, and words cannot, even when 
employed by such an artist as Homer or Dante, present 
to the mind images of visible objects quite so lively and 20 
exact as those which we carry away from looking on 
the works of the brush and the chisel. But, on the other 
hand, the range of poetry is infinitely wider than that 
of any other imitative art, or than that of all the other 
imitative arts together. The sculptor can imitate only 25 
form; the painter only form and color; the actor, until 
the poet supphes him with words, only form, color, and 
motion. Poetry holds the outer world in common with 
the other arts. The heart of man is the province of 
poetry, and of poetry alone. The painter, the sculptor, 30 



184 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

and the actor can exhibit no more of human passion and 
character than that small portion which overflows into 
the gesture and the face, always an imperfect, often a 
deceitful sign of that which is within. The deeper and 
5 more complex parts of human nature can be exhibited 
by means of words alone. Thus the objects of the imi- 
tation of poetry are the whole external and the whole 
internal universe, the face of nature, the vicissitudes of 
fortune, man as he is in himself, man as he appears in 

10 society, all things which really exist, all things of which 
we can form an image in our minds by combining to- 
gether parts of things which really exist. The domain 
of this imperial art is commensurate with the imagi- 
native faculty. 

15 An art essentially imitative ought not surely to be sub- 
jected to rules which tend to make its imitations less per- 
fect than they otherwise would be; and those who obey 
such rules ought to be called, not correct, but incorrect 
artists. The true way to judge of the rules by which 

20 English poetry was governed during the last century is 
to look at the effects which they produced. 

It was in 1780 that Johnson completed his Lives oj 
the Poets. He tells us in that work that, since the time 
of Dryden, English poetry had shown no tendency to 

25 relapse into its original savageness, that its language had 
been refined, its numbers tuned, and its sentiments im- 
proved. It may perhaps be doubted whether the na- 
tion had any great reason to exult in the refinements and 
improvements which gave it Douglas for Othello^ and 

30 the Triumphs of Temper for the Fairy Queen. 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 1 85 

It was during the thirty years which preceded the ap- 
pearance of Johnson's Lives that the diction and ver- 
sification of EngHsh poetry were, in the sense in which 
the word is commonly used, most correct. Those thirty 
years are, as respects poetry, the most deplorable part 5 
of our literary history. They have indeed bequeathed 
to us scarcely any poetry which deserves to be remem- 
bered. Two or three hundred lines of Gray, twice as 
many of Goldsmith, a few stanzas of Beattie and Col- 
Hns, a few strophes of Mason, and a few clever prologues 10 
and satires, were the masterpieces of this age of con- 
summate excellence. They may all be printed in one 
volume, and that volume would be by no means a vol- 
ume of extraordinary merit. It would contain no poetry 
of the very highest class, and little which could be placed 15 
very high in the second class. The Paradise Regained 
or Comiis would outweigh it all. 

At last, when poetry had fallen into such utter decay 
that Mr. Hayley was thought a great poet, it began to 
appear that the excess of the evil was about to work the 20 
cure. Men became tired of an insipid conformity to a 
standard which derived no authority from nature or 
reason. A shallow criticism had taught them to ascribe 
a superstitious value to the spurious correctness of poet- 
asters. A deeper criticism brought them back to the true 25 
correctness of the first great masters. The eternal laws 
of poetry regained their power, and the temporary 
fashions which had superseded those laws went after 
the wig of Lovelace and the hoop of Clarissa. 

It was in a cold and barren season that the seeds of 30 



1 86 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

that rich harvest which we have reaped were first sown. 
While poetry was every year becoming more feeble and 
more mechanical, while the monotonous versification 
which Pope had introduced, no longer redeemed by his 
5 brilliant wit and his compactness of expression, palled 
on the ear of the public, the great works of the old mas- 
ters were every day attracting more and more of the ad- 
miration which they deserved. The plays of Shakespeare 
were better acted, better edited, and better known than 

10 they had ever been. Our fine ancient ballads were again 
read with pleasure, and it became a fashion to imitate 
them. Many of the imitations were altogether con- 
temptible. But they showed that men had at least 
begun to admire the excellence which they could not 

15 rival. A literary revolution was evidently at hand. 
There was a ferment in the minds of men, a vague crav- 
ing for something new, a disposition to hail with de- 
light anything which might at first sight w^ear the ap- 
pearance of originality. A reforming age is always 

20 fertile to impostors. The same excited state of public 
feeling which produced the great separation from the 
see of Rome produced also the excesses of the Anabap- 
tists. The same stir in the public mind of Europe which 
overthrew the abuses of the old French government, 

25 produced the Jacobins and Theophilanthropists. Mac- 
pherson and Delia Crusca were to the true reformers of 
English poetry what Knipperdoling was to Luther, or 
Clootz to Turgot. The success of Chatterton's forgeries 
and of the far more contemptible forgeries of Ireland 

30 showed that people had begun to love the old poetry 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 1 87 

well, though not wisely. The public were never more 
disposed to believe stories without evidence, and to ad- 
mire books without merit. Any thing which could 
break the dull monotony of the correct school was ac- 
ceptable. 5 

The forerunner of the great restoration of our litera- 
ture was Cowper. His literary career began and ended 
at nearly the same time with that of Alfieri. A com- 
parison between Alfieri and Cowper may, at first sight, 
appear as strange as that which a loyal Presbyterian 10 
minister is said to have made in 1745 between George 
the Second and Enoch. It may seem that the gentle, 
shy, melancholy Calvinist, whose spirit had been broken 
by fagging at school, who had not courage to earn a 
livelihood by reading the titles of bills in the House of 15 
Lords, and whose favorite associates were a blind old 
lady and an evangelical divine, could have nothing in 
common with the haughty, ardent, and voluptuous 
nobleman, the horse-jockey, the libertine, who fought 
Lord Ligonier in Hyde Park, and robbed the Pretender 20 
of his queen. But though the private lives of these re- 
markable men present scarcely any points of resemblance, 
their literary lives bear a close analogy to each other. 
They both found poetry in its lowest state of degrada- 
tion, feeble, artificial, and altogether nerveless. They 25 
both possessed precisely the talents which fitted them 
for the task of raising it from that deep abasement. 
They cannot, in strictness, be called great poets. They 
had not in any very high degree the creative power, 

" The vision and the faculty divine ; " 30 



1 88 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

but they had great vigor of thought, great warmth of 
feeUng, and what, in their circumstances, was above all 
things important, a manliness of taste which approached 
to roughness. They did not deal in mechanical versi- 
5 fication and conventional phrases. They wrote con- 
cerning things the thought of which set their hearts on 
fire; and thus what they wrote, even when it wanted every 
other grace, had that inimitable grace which sincerity 
and strong passion impart to the rudest and most homely 

10 compositions. Each of them sought for inspiration in 
a noble and affecting subject, fertile of images which 
had not yet been hackneyed. Liberty was the muse of 
Alfieri, Rehgion was the muse of Cowper. The same 
truth is found in their Hghter pieces. They were not 

15 among those who deprecated the severity, or deplored 
the absence of an unreal mistress in melodious common- 
places. Instead of raving about imaginary Chloes and 
Sylvias, Cowper wrote of Mrs. Unwin's knitting needles. 
The only love-verses of Alfieri were addressed to one 

20 whom he truly and passionately loved. "Tutte le rime 
amorose che seguono," says he, "tutte sono per essa, 
e ben sue, e di lei solamente; poiche mai d' altra donna 
per certo non cantero." 

These great men were not free from affectation. But 

25 their affectation was directly opposed to the affectation 
which generally prevailed. Each of them expressed, 
in strong and bitter language, the contempt which he 
felt for the effeminate poetasters who were in fash- 
ion both in England and in Italy. Cowper complains 

30 that 



LIFE or LORD BYRON 1 89 

" Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ, 
The substitute for genius, taste, and wit." 

He praised Pope; yet he regretted that Pope had 

" Made poetry a mere mechanic art. 
And every warbler had his tune by heart." 5 

Alfieri speaks with similar scorn of the tragedies of his 
predecessors. " Mi cadevano dalle mani per la langui- 
dezza, triviality e prolissitk dei modi e del verso, senza 
parlare poi della snervatezza dei pensieri. Or perche 
mai questa nostra divina Hngua, si maschia anco, ed 10 
energica, e feroce, in bocca di Dante, dovrk, ella farsi 
cosi sbiadata ed eunuca nel dialogo tragico?" 

To men thus sick of the languid manner of their con- 
temporaries ruggedness seemed a venial fault, or rather 
a positive merit. In their hatred of meretricious orna- 15 
ment, and of what Cowper calls "creamy smoothness," 
they erred on the opposite side. Their style was too 
austere, their versification too harsh. It is not easy, 
however, to overrate the service which they rendered 
to literature. The intrinsic value of their poems is con- 20 
siderable. But the example which they set of mutiny 
against an absurd system was invaluable. The part 
which they performed was rather that of Moses than that 
of Joshua. They opened the house of bondage; but 
they did not enter the promised land. 25 

During the twenty years which followed the death of 
Cowper, the revolution in English poetry was fully con- 
summated. None of the writers of this period, not even 
Sir Walter Scott, contributed so much to the consumma- 



igo NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

tion as Lord Byron. Yet Lord Byron contributed to it 
unwillingly, and with constant self-reproach and shame. 
All his tastes and inclinations led him to take part with 
the school of poetry which was going out against the 
S school w^hich was coming in. Of Pope himself he spoke 
with extravagant admiration. He did not venture di- 
rectly to say that the Httle man of Twickenham was a 
greater poet than Shakespeare or Milton; but he hinted 
pretty clearly that he thought so. Of his contemporaries, 

10 scarcely any had so much of his admiration as Mr. 
Gifford, who, considered as a poet, was merely Pope, 
without Pope's wit and fancy, and whose satires are 
decidedly inferior in vigor and poignancy to the very 
imperfect juvenile performance of Lord Byron himself. 

15 He now and then praised Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. 
Coleridge, but ungraciously and without cordiality. 
When he attacked them, he brought his whole soul to 
the work. Of the most elaborate of Mr. Wordsworth's 
poems he could find nothing to say, but that it was 

20 "clumsy, and frowsy, and his aversion." Peter Bell 
excited his spleen to such a degree that he evoked the 
shades of Pope and Dryden, and demanded of them 
whether it were possible that such trash could evade 
contempt ? In his heart he thought his own Pilgrimage 

25 of Harold inferior to his Imitation of Horace's Art of 
Poetry, a feeble echo of Pope and Johnson. This in- 
sipid performance he repeatedly designed to publish, 
and was withheld only by the solicitations of his friends. 
He has distinctly declared his approbation of the unities, 

30 the most absurd laws by which genius was ever held 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 191 

in servitude. In one of his works, we think in his letter 
to Mr. Bowles, he compares the poetry of the eighteenth 
century to the Parthenon, and that of the nineteenth to 
a Turkish mosque, and boasts that, although he had 
assisted his contemporaries in building their grotesque 5 
and barbarous edifice, h^ had never joined them in 
defacing the remains of a chaster and more graceful 
architecture. In another letter he compares the change 
which had recently passed on English poetry to the de- 
cay of Latin poetry after the Augustan age. In the time 10 
of Pope, he tells his friend, it was all Horace with us. 
It is all Claudian now. 

For the great old masters of the art he had no very 
enthusiastic veneration. In his letter to Mr. Bowles he 
uses expressions which clearly indicate that he preferred 15 
Pope's Iliad to the original. Mr. Moore confesses that 
his friend was no very fervent admirer of Shakespeare. 
Of all the poets of the first class. Lord Byron seems to 
have admired Dante and Milton most. Yet in the 
fourth canto of Childe Harold, he places Tasso, a writer 20 
not merely inferior to them, but of quite a different order 
of mind, on at least a footing of equality with them. Mr. 
Hunt is, we suspect, quite correct in saying that Lord 
Byron could see little or no merit in Spenser. 

But Byron the critic and Byron the poet were two 25 
very different men. The effects of the noble writer's 
theory may indeed often be traced in his practice. But 
his disposition led him to accommodate himself to the 
literary taste of the age in which he lived; and his talents 
would have enabled him to accommodate himself to the 30 



192 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

taste of any age. Though he said much of his contempt 
for mankind, and though he boasted that amidst the 
inconstancy of fortune and of fame he was all-sufficient 
to himself, his literary career indicated nothing of that 
5 lonely and unsocial pride which he affected. We cannot 
conceive him, like Milton or Wordsworth, defying the 
criticism of his contemporaries, retorting their scorn, 
and laboring on a poem in the full assurance that it 
would be unpopular, and in the full assurance that it 

10 would be immortal. He has said, by the mouth of one 
of his heroes, in speaking of poHtical greatness, that 
"he must serve who fain would sway;" and this he as- 
signs as a reason for not entering into political life. He 
did not consider that the sway which he had exercised 

15 in Hterature had been purchased by servitude, by the 
sacrifice of his own taste to the taste of the public. 

He was the creature of his age; and whenever he had 
lived he would have been the creature of his age. Un- 
der Charles the First Byron would have been more 

20 quaint than Donne. Under Charles the Second, the 
rants of Byron's rhyming plays would have pitted it, 
boxed it, and galleried it, with those of any Bays or 
Bilboa. Under George the First the monotonous smooth- 
ness of Byron's versification and the terseness of his ex- 

25 pression would have made Pope himself envious. 

As it was, he was the man of the last thirteen years of 
the eighteenth century, and of the first twenty-three 
years of the nineteenth century. He belonged half to 
the old, and half to the new school of poetry. His per- 

30 sonal taste led him to the former; his thirst of praise 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 1 93 

to the latter; his talents were equally suited to both. 
His fame was a common ground on which the zealots 
of both sides, Gifford, for example, and Shelley, might 
meet. He was the representative, not of either literary 
party, but of both at once, and of their conflict, and of 5 
the victory by which that conflict was terminated. His 
poetry fills and measures the whole of the vast interval 
through which our literature has moved since the time 
of Johnson. It touches the Essay on Man at the one 
extremity, and the Excursion at the other. lo 

There are several parallel instances in literary history. 
Voltaire, for example, was the connecting link between 
the France of Lewis the Fourteenth and the France of 
Lewis the Sixteenth, between Racine and Boileau on 
the one side, and Condorcet and Beaumarchais on the 15 
other. He, like Lord Byron, put himself at the head 
of an intellectual revolution, dreading it all the time, 
murmuring at it, sneering at it, yet choosing rather to 
move before his age in any direction than to be left be- 
hind and forgotten. Dryden was the connecting link 20 
between the literature of the age of James the First and 
the Hterature of the age of Anne. Oromasdes and Ari- 
manes fought for him. Arimanes carried him off. But 
his heart was to the last with Oromasdes. Lord Byron 
was, in the same manner, the mediator between two 25 
generations, between two hostile poetical sects. Though 
always sneering at Mr. Wordsworth, he was yet, though 
perhaps unconsciously, the interpreter between Mr. 
Wordsworth and the m.ultitude. In the Lyrical Ballads 
and the Excursion Mr. Wordsworth appeared as the 30 
Prose — 13 



194 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

high priest of a worship, of which nature was the idol. 
No poems have ever indicated a more exquisite per- 
ception of the beauty of the outer world, or a more 
passionate love and reverence for that beauty. Yet 
5 they were not popular; and it is not likely that they ever 
will be popular as the poetry of Sir Walter Scott is pop- 
ular. The feeling which pervaded them was too deep 
for general sympathy. Their style was often too mys- 
terious for general comprehension. They made a few 

10 esoteric disciples, and many scoffers. Lord Byron 
founded what may be called an exoteric Lake school; 
and all the readers of verse in England, we might say 
in Europe, hastened to sit at his feet. What Mr. Words- 
worth had said Hke a recluse. Lord Byron said like a 

15 man of the world, with less profound feeling, but with 
more perspicuity, energy, and conciseness. We would 
refer our readers to the last two cantos of Childe Harold 
and to Manfred, in proof of these observations. 

Lord Byron, like Mr. Wordsworth, had nothing dra- 

20 matic in his genius. He was indeed the reverse of a 
great dramatist, the very antithesis to a great dramatist. 
All his characters, Harold looking on the sky, from which 
his country and the sun are disappearing together, the 
Giaour, standing apart in the gloom of the side aisle, 

25 and casting a haggard scowl from under his long hood 
at the crucifix and the censer, Conrad leaning on his 
sword by the watch tower, Lara smiling on the dancers, 
Alp gazing steadily on the fatal cloud as it passes before 
the moon, Manfred wandering among the precipices of 

30 Berne, Azzo on the judgment seat, Ugo at the bar, 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 195 

Lambro frowning on the siesta of his daughter and 
Juan, Cain presenting his unacceptable offering, are 
essentially the same. The varieties are varieties merely 
of age, situation, and outward show. If ever Lord 
Byron attempted to exhibit men of a different kind, he 5 
always made them either insipid or unnatural. Selim 
is nothing. Bonnivart is nothing. Don Juan, in the 
first and best cantos, is a feeble copy of the page in the 
Marriage of Figaro. Johnson, the man whom Juan 
meets in the slave-market, is a most striking failure. 10 
How differently would Sir Walter Scott have drawn a 
bluff, fearless EngUshman, in such a situation! The 
portrait would have seemed to walk out of the canvas. 

Sardanapalus is more coarsely drawn than any dra- 
matic personage that we can remember. His heroism 15 
and his effeminacy, his contempt of death and his dread 
of a weighty helmet, his kingly resolution to be seen 
in the foremost ranks, and the anxiety with which he 
calls for a looking-glass, that he may be seen to advan- 
tage, are contrasted, it is true, with all the point of 20 
Juvenal. Indeed, the hint of the character seems to 
have been taken from what Juvenal says of Otho: 

" Speculum civilis sarcina belli. 
Nimirum summi duels est occidere Galbam, 
Et curare cutem summi constantia civis, 25 

Bedriaci in campo spolium affectare Palati, 
Et pressum in faciem digitis extendere panem." 

These are excellent Hues in a satire. But it is not the 
business of the dramatist to exhibit characters in this 
sharp antithetical way. It is not thus that Shakespeare 30 



196 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

makes Prince Hal rise from the rake of Eastcheap into 
the hero of Shrewsbury, and sink again into the rake 
of Eastcheap. It is not thus that Shakespeare has ex- 
hibited the union of effeminacy and valor in Antony. 
5 A dramatist cannot commit a greater error than that 
of following those pointed descriptions of character in 
which satirists and historians indulge so much. It is 
by rejecting what is natural that satirists and historians 
produce these striking characters. Their great object 

10 generally is to ascribe to every man as many contra- 
dictory qualities as possible, and this is an object easily 
attained. By judicious selection and judicious exag- 
geration, the intellect and the disposition of any human 
being might be described as being made up of nothing 

15 but startling contrasts. If the dramatist attempts to 
create a being answering to one of these descriptions, he 
fails, because he reverses an imperfect analytical process. 
He produces, not a man, but a personified epigram. 
Very eminent \vriters have fallen into this snare. Ben 

20 Jonson has given us a Hermogenes, taken from the lively 
lines of Horace, but the inconsistency which is so amus- 
ing in the satire appears unnatural and disgusts us in the 
play. Sir Walter Scott has committed a far more glar- 
ing error of the same kind in the novel of Peveril. Ad- 

25 miring, as every judicious reader must admire, the keen 
and vigorous lines in which Dryden satirized the Duke 
of Buckingham, Sir Walter attempted to make a Duke of 
Buckingham to suit them, a real Hving Zimri; and he 
made, not a man, but the most grotesque of all monsters. 

30 A writer who should attempt to introduce into a play 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 197 

or a novel such a Wharton as the Wharton of Pope, 
or a Lord Hervey answering to Sporus, would fail in 
the same manner. 

But to return to Lord Byron; his women, Hke his men, 
are all of one breed. Haidee is a half-savage and girhsh 5 
JuHa; Juha is a civihzed and matronly Haidee. Leila 
is a wedded Zuleika, Zuleika a virgin Leila. Gulnare and 
Medora appear to have been intentionally opposed to 
each other. Yet the difference is a difference of situation 
only. A sHght change of circumstances would, it should 10 
seem, have sent Gulnare to the lute of Medora, and 
armed Medora with the dagger of Gulnare. 

It is hardly too much to say, that Lord Byron could 
exhibit only one man and only one woman, a man proud, 
moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery 15 
in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in re- 
venge, yet capable of deep and strong affection : a woman 
all softness and gentleness, loving to caress and to be 
caressed, but capable of being transformed by passion 
into a tigress, 20 

Even these two characters, his only two characters, 
he could not exhibit dramatically. He exhibited them 
in the manner, not of Shakespeare, but of Clarendon. 
He analyzed them, he made them analyze themselves; 
but he did not make them show themselves. We are 25 
told, for example, in many lines of great force and 
spirit, that the speech of Lara was bitterly sarcastic, 
that he talked little of his travels, that if he was much 
questioned about them, his answers became short, and 
his brow gloomy. But we have none of Lara's sarcastic 30 



198 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

speeches or short answers. It is not thus that the great 
masters of human nature have portrayed human beings. 
Homer never tells us that Nestor loved to relate long 
stories about his youth. Shakespeare never tells us 
5 that in the mind of lago everything that is beautiful and 
endearing was associated with some filthy and debasing 
idea. 

It is curious to observe the tendency which the dialogue 
of Lord Byron always has to lose its character of a dia- 

10 logue and to become soliloquy. The scenes between 
Manfred and the Chamois-hunter, between Manfred and 
the Witch of the Alps, between Manfred and the Abbot, 
are instances of this tendency. Manfred, after a few 
unimportant speeches, has all the talk to himself. The 

15 other interlocutors are nothing more than good listeners. 
They drop an occasional question or ejaculation which 
sets Manfred off again on the inexhaustible topic of his 
personal feelings. If we examine the fine passages in 
Lord Byron's dramas, the description of Rome, for 

20 example, in Manfred, the description of a Venetian 
revel in Marino Faliero, the concluding invective which 
the old doge pronounces against Venice, we shall find 
that there is nothing dramatic in these speeches, that 
they derive none of their effect from the character or 

25 situation of the speaker, and that they would have been 
as fine, or finer, if they had been published as fragments 
of blank verse by Lord Byron. There is scarcely a 
speech in Shakespeare of which the same could be said. 
No skillful reader of Shakespeare can endure to see 

30 what are called the fine things taken out, under the 



LIFE or LORD BYRON 1 99 

name of "Beauties" or of "Elegant Extracts," or to 
hear any single passage, "To be or not to be," for ex- 
ample, quoted as a sample of the great poet. "To be 
or not to be" has merit undoubtedly as a composition. 
It would have merit if put into the mouth of a chorus. 5 
But its merit as a composition vanishes when compared 
with its merit as belonging to Hamlet. It is not too much 
to say that the great plays of Shakespeare would lose 
less by being deprived of all the passages which are 
commonly called the fine passages, than those passages 10 
lose by being read separately from the play. This is 
perhaps the highest praise which can be given to a 
dramatist. 

On the other hand, it may be doubted whether there 
is, in all Lord Byron's plays, a single remarkable passage 15 
which owes any portion of its interest or effect to its 
'connection with the characters or the action. He has 
written only one scene, as far as we can recollect, which 
is dramatic even in manner, the scene between Lucifer 
and Cain. The conference is animated, and each of the 20 
interlocutors has a fair share of it. But this scene, when 
examined, will be found to be a confirmation of our 
remarks. It is a dialogue only in form. It is a solil- 
oquy in essence. It is in reality a debate carried on 
within one single unquiet and skeptical mind. The 25 
questions and the answers, the objections and the so- 
lutions, all belong to the same character. 

A writer who showed so little dramatic skill in works 
professedly dramatic was not likely to write narrative 
with dramatic effect. Nothing could indeed be more 30 



200 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

rude and careless than the structure of his narrative 
poems. He seems to have thought, with the hero of the 
Rehearsal, that the plot was good for nothing but to 
bring in fine things. His two longest works, Childe 
5 Harold and Don Juan, have no plan whatever. Either 
of them might have been extended to any length, or cut 
short at any point. The state in which the Giaour ap- 
pears illustrates the manner in which all Byron's poems 
were constructed. They are all, like the Giaour, col- 

lo lections of fragments; and, though there may be no 
empty spaces marked by asterisks, it is still easy to per- 
ceive, by the clumsiness of the joining, where the parts 
for the sake of which the whole was composed end and 
begin. 

15 It was in description and meditation that Byron ex- 
celled. "Description," as he said in Don Juan, "was 
his forte." His manner is indeed pecuHar, and is al- 
most unequaled; rapid, sketchy, full of vigor; the se- 
lection happy; the strokes few and bold. In spite of 

20 the reverence which we feel for the genius of Mr. Words- 
worth we cannot but think that the minuteness of his 
descriptions often diminishes their effect. He has ac- 
customed himself to gaze on nature with the eye of a 
lover, to dwell on every feature, and to mark every 

25 change of aspect. Those beauties which strike the most 
negligent observer, and those which only a close atten- 
tion discovers, are equally familiar to him and are equally 
prominent in his poetry. The proverb of old Hesiod, 
that half is often more than the whole, is eminently 

30 applicable to description. The policy of the Dutch 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 20I 

who cut down most of the precious trees in the Spice 
Islands, in order to raise the value of what remained, 
was a policy which poets would do well to imitate. It 
was a pohcy which no poet understood better than 
Lord Byron. Whatever his faults might be, he was 5 
never, while his mind retained its vigor, accused of 
prohxity. 

His descriptions, great as was their intrinsic merit, 
derived their principal interest from the feeling which 
always mingled with them. He was himself the be- 10 
ginning, the middle, and the end, of all his own poetry, 
the hero of every tale, the chief object in every land- 
scape. Harold, Lara, Manfred, and a crowd of other 
characters, were universally considered merely as loose 
incognitos of Byron; and there is every reason to believe 15 
that he meant them to be so considered. The wonders 
of the outer world, the Tagus, with the mighty fleets 
of England riding on its bosom, the towers of Cintra 
overhanging the shaggy forest of cork trees and wil- 
lows, the glaring marble of Pentelicus, the banks of the 20 
Rhine, the glaciers of Clarens, the sweet Lake of Leman, 
the dell of Egeria with its summer birds and rustling 
lizards, the shapeless ruins of Rome overgrown with 
ivy and wallflowers, the stars, the sea, the mountains, 
all were mere accessaries, the background to one dark 25 
and melancholy figure. 

Never had any writer so vast a command of the whole 
eloquence of scorn, misanthropy, and despair. That 
Marah was never dry. No art could sweeten, no draughts 
could exhaust, its perennial waters of bitterness. Never 30 



202 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

was there such variety in monotony as that of Byron. 
From maniac laughter to piercing lamentation, there 
was not a single note of human anguish of which he was 
not master. Year after year, and month after month, 
5 he continued to repeat that to be wretched is the destiny 
of all; that to be eminently wretched is the destiny of 
the eminent; that all the desires by which we are cursed 
lead alike to misery, if they are not gratified, to the misery 
of disappointment, if they are gratified, to the misery 

lo of satiety. His heroes are men who have arrived by 
different roads at the same goal of despair, who are 
sick of life, who are at war with society, who are sup- 
ported in their anguish only by an unconquerable pride 
resembling that of Prometheus on the rock or of Satan 

15 in the burning marl, who can master their agonies by 
the force of their will, and who, to the last, defy the whole 
power of earth and heaven. He always described him- 
self as a man of the same kind with his favorite creations, 
as a man whose heart had been withered, whose capacity 

20 for happiness was gone and could not be restored, but 
whose invincible spirit dared the worst that could be- 
fall him here or hereafter. 

How much of this morbid feeling sprang from an 
original disease of the mind, how much from real mis- 

25 fortune, how much from the nervousness of dissipation, 
how much was fanciful, how much was merely affected, 
it is impossible for us, and would probably have been 
impossible for the most intimate friends of Lord Byron, 
to decide. Whether there ever existed, or can ever 

30 exist, a person answering to the description which he 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 203 . 

gave of himself may be doubted; but that he was not 
such a person is beyond all doubt. It is ridiculous to 
imagine that a man whose mind was really imbued 
with scorn of his fellow-creatures would have published 
three or four books every year in order to tell them so; 5 
or that a man who could say with truth that he neither 
sought sympathy nor needed it would have admitted 
all Europe to hear his farewell to his wife, and his 
blessings on his child. In the second canto of Childe 
Harold, he tells us that he is insensible to fame and 10 
obloquy: 

" 111 may such contest now the spirit move, 
Which heeds nor keen reproof nor partial praise." 

Yet we know on the best evidence that, a day or two 
before he published these lines, he was greatly, indeed 15 
childishly, elated by the compliments paid to his maiden 
speech in the House of Lords. 

We are far, however, from thinking that his sadness 
was altogether feigned. He was naturally a man of 
great sensibility; he had been ill educated; his feelings 20 
had been early exposed to sharp trials; he had been 
crossed in his boyish love; he had been mortified by the 
failure of his first literary efforts; he was straitened in 
pecuniary circumstances; he was unfortunate in his do- 
mestic relations; the public treated him with cruel in- 25 
justice; his health and spirits suffered from his dissi- 
pated habits of life; he was on the whole, an unhappy 
man. He early discovered that, by parading his unhap- 
piness before the multitude, he produced an immense 
sensation. The world gave him every encouragement to 30 



. 204 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

talk about his mental sufferings. The interest which 
his first confessions excited induced him to affect much 
that he did not feel; and the affectation probably re- 
acted on his feelings. How far the character in which 
5 he exhibited himself was genuine, and how far theatrical, 
it would probably have puzzled himself to say. 

There can be no doubt that this remarkable man 
owed the vast influence which he exercised over his con- 
temporaries at least as much to his gloomy egotism as 

lo to the real power of his poetry. We never could very 
clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular 
in conversation, should be so popular in writing; or how 
it is that men who affect in their compositions quahties 
and feelings which they have not, impose so much more 

15 easily on their contemporaries than on posterity. The 
interest which the loves of Petrarch excited in his own 
time, and the pitying fondness with which half Europe 
looked upon Rousseau, are well known. To readers 
of our age, the love of Petrarch seems to have been love 

20 of that kind which breaks no hearts, and the sufferings 
of Rousseau to have deserved laughter rather than pity, 
to have been partly counterfeited, and partly the con- 
sequences of his own perverseness and vanity. 

What our grandchildren may think of the character 

25 of Lord Byron, as exhibited in his poetry, we will not 
pretend to guess. It is certain that the interest which 
he excited during his life is without a parallel in literary 
history. The feeling with which young readers of 
poetry regard him can be conceived only by those who 

30 have experienced it. To people who are unacquainted 



LIFE OF LORD BYRON 205 

with real calamity, " nothing is so dainty sweet as lovely 
melancholy." This faint image of sorrow has in all 
ages been considered by young gentlemen as an agree- 
able excitement. Old gentlemen and middle-aged gentle- 
men have so many real causes of sadness that they are 5 
rarely inclined "to be as sad as night only for wanton- 
ness." Indeed they want the power almost as much 
as the inclination. We know very few persons engaged 
in active life who, even if they were to procure stools 
to be melancholy upon, and were to sit down with all 10 
the premeditation of Master Stephen, would be able 
to enjoy much of what somebody calls the "ecstasy of 
woe." 

Among that large class of young persons whose read- 
ing is almost entirely confined to works of imagination, 15 
the popularity of Lord Byron was unbounded. They 
bought pictures of him; they treasured up the smallest 
relics of him; they learned his poems by heart, and did 
their best to write like him, and to look like him. Many 
of them practiced at the glass in the hope of catching 20 
the curl of the upper lip, and the scowl of the brow, 
which appear in some of his portraits. A few discarded 
their neckcloths in imitation of their great leader. For 
some years the Minerva press sent forth no novel with- 
out a mysterious, unhappy, Lara-like peer. The num- 25 
ber of hopeful undergraduates and medical students 
who became things of dark imaginings, on whom the 
freshness of the heart ceased to fall Hke dew, whose 
passions had consumed themselves to dust, and to whom 
the relief of tears was denied, passes all calculation. 30 



2o6. NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

This was not the worst. There was created in the 
minds of many of these enthusiasts a pernicious and 
absurd association between intellectual power and 
moral depravity. From the poetry of Lord Byron they 
5 drew a system of ethics, compounded of misanthropy 
and voluptuousness, a system in which the two great 
commandments were, to hate your neighbor, and to love 
your neighbor's wife. 

This affectation has passed away; and a few more 

10 years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical 
potency which once belonged to the name of Byron. 
To us he is still a man, young, noble, and unhappy. 
To our children he will be merely a writer; and their 
impartial judgment will appoint his place among 

15 writers, without regard to his rank or to his private 
history. That his poetry will undergo a severe sifting, 
that much of what has been admired by his contem- 
poraries will be rejected as worthless, we have little 
doubt. But we have as little doubt, that, after the 

20 closest scrutiny, there will still remain much that can 
only perish with the English language. 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

[William Makepeace Thackeray, acknowledged by general 
agreement to be one of the three or four greatest English novelists, 
was born in Calcutta in 1811. Educated at Cambridge and by 
travel on the continent, he received his first recognition in the col- 
umns of Fraser's Magazine. From 1832 until his death in 1863, 
Thackeray was indefatigable as a writer, and literally thousands 
of pages fell from his pen. For Punch, Thackeray wrote his 
Book of Snobs which is in some respects his most characteristic 
work. Thackeray's novels, among which Vanity Fair, Pende7inis, 
Henry Esmond, and Barry Lyndon are the best, are well known 
wherever the English language is spoken.] 

The essay before us was the first in the series entitled 
The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century, and 
was dehvered by the author in England and America in 
the years 185 1 and 1852. The essays were published in 
1853 and form Thackeray's most considerable contri- 
bution to formal criticism. 

Charming as they are, these lectures on the English 
Humorists and the succeeding lectures on the Four 
Georges can hardly be considered perfectly representative 
of Thackeray's style. In the first place they were de- 
livered with a frankly conciliatory intent. Though pug- 
nacious in his books, Thackeray was personally the 
gentlest and most lovable of men. He was constitu- 
tionally as incapable of carrying to the public platform 
the keen, cool, and biting satire of his written essays as 
he was unable to play the satirist at the dinner table. 

For these reasons the lectures are a little unlike Thack- 
eray's written style. But they are perhaps even more 
207 



2o8 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

representative of the man than some of his other work. 
They show him in his private as well as in his public 
aspects. They show his keen insight turned to the pur- 
suits of loving sympathy, his militant honesty of convic- 
tion arming itself for a braver battle than that of satire 
and innuendo. They show, further, that however much 
Thackeray hated sin in the abstract, he loved men. He 
despised none of the characters of his novels — else why 
did he so enjoy depicting the rogue ? Much less could he 
offend the prejudices of any of his hearers as he stood on 
the platform before them. 

There can be little doubt that, judged from the view 
point of objective art, the essay on Swift would be im- 
proved were not the attitude of the author so candidly 
a personal one. As it is, the author is led to an exag- 
geration of the criteria of private judgment to the detri- 
ment of the larger critical purposes of the essay. As a 
matter of fact, Thackeray was not a literary critic in the 
narrow sense of the word. In spite of himself he con- 
tinually slips back from a consideration of an author's 
work to the man behind the book. This fact should be 
kept in mind by the reader who thinks to read in the 
following essay a judicious critique on the work of the 
great eighteenth-century Dean. In the Dean's work, 
Thackeray is only secondarily interested. He grants 
its immense force, he stands in awe of the genius dis- 
played, but speculations on the author continually ob- 
trude. He even misinterprets the book in looking for 
the man, as may be seen in the way he quite unfairly 
reprehends Swift's satire on the eating of children. 

Because he had his audience always in view and ob- 
served perhaps just a trifle too much the rigors of a popu- 
lar and conventional morality, the tone of Thackeray's 
essay is thoroughly monochromatic. The entire criti- 
cism is apparently delivered under the influence of a 
certain mood. There is throughout the essay the pa- 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 209 

thetic sense of "dust and ashes, dead and done with," 
which Thackeray so well knew how to assume. With the 
eighteenth century he was thoroughly at home. His 
essay, therefore, gives the impression not of the didactic 
propounding of facts, but of discursive conversation on 
a loved topic by one who is steeped in it. This mono- 
chromatic tone is difficult to carry. It gives the reader 
too much the sense that the emotion has been built on 
preconceived ideas. It is for this reason that, while 
the present essay deals far more with Swift than with his 
work, it hardly gives a true picture of Swift. The sketch 
is too impressionistic. The pathetic isolated elements of 
the Dean's character are thrown into strong relief be- 
cause they adapt themselves best with Thackeray's 
mood. But the great Dean has other sides that could 
never be interpreted by the minor chords in which 
Thackeray chose to play. As a consideration of these 
would have violated the unity of his spiritual impres- 
sion, Thackeray has for them never a word. 

As truly as of any other author represented in this 
book, it may be said that Thackeray's style is an indi- 
vidual thing. For this reason it is hardly to be held 
up as a model for imitation by students. Many of the 
fundamental rules of the rhetorics, Thackeray violated 
continually; like Scott, he could afford to do so. As with 
Fielding, the reader was very close to Thackeray's elbow 
as he wrote. For this reason his composition is conver- 
sational, discursive, and prolix. It touches with equal 
ease the springs of laughter and of tears. Sometimes 
the author purposely permits himself to become hope- 
lessly involved, in order that in mid-sentence he may 
start anew with a cHmacteric "I say." Thackeray 
flashes from thought to thought as his fancy leads him. 
Sometimes his impressionism of treatment might seem 
thinly to veil superficiality of knowledge. "The Boyne 
was being fought and won, and lost," he writes in hasty 
Prose — 14 



2IO NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

summary. Sometimes, like Hazlitt, he breaks out into 
a string of epithets, dubbing in allusion the manifold 
characteristics of the times, " the worthlessness of all man- 
kind, the pettiness, cruelty, pride, imbecility, the general 
vanity, the foolish pretension, the mock greatness, the 
pompous dullness." 

The gifts for which Thackeray stood preeminent may 
easily be pushed into bathos and burlesque. To these 
discreditable ends many of Thackeray's imitators have 
come. Indeed, Thackeray did not himself remain on 
the right side of the line that divides the deep from shallow 
emotion. Sometimes he seems to be hypnotized by his 
own mood. Then his subject becomes a mere expedient 
for the spinning of the attenuated Thackerayan fancies. 
But though it is sometimes finespun, Thackeray's feeling 
is never insincere; his laughter always rings sure and true. 

The best thing in an essay of Thackeray's is the man 
himself. In the essay on Swift there is seen more of 
Thackeray than of Swift, and, all in all, the impression of 
the former is the truer one. It is easy enough to domi- 
nate a style with force; it is more difficult to dominate it 
with sweetness and smiles. Perhaps no one outside of 
Lamb has done this so well as Thackeray has done it. 
In Thackeray's style we see the complex though lu- 
minous intelligence, the untiring energy, the unerring 
keenness, and the philosophical poise of the man him- 
self. 



SWIFT 

In treating of the English humorists of the past age, 
it is of the men and of their lives, rather than of their 
books, that I ask permission to speak to you; and in 
doing so, you are aware that I cannot hope to entertain 



SWIFT 211 

you with a merely humorous or facetious story. Harle- 
quin without his mask is known to present a very sober 
countenance, and was himself, the story gges, the melan- 
choly patient whom the Doctor advised to go and see 
Harlequin — a man full of cares and perplexities like 5 
the rest of us, whose Self must always be serious to him, 
under whatever mask or disguise or uniform he presents 
it to the public. And as all of you here must needs be 
grave when you think of your own past and present, 
you will not look to find, in the histories of those whose 10 
lives and feelings I am going to try and describe to you, 
a story that is otherwise than serious, and often very 
sad. If Humor only meant laughter, you would scarcely 
feel more interest about humorous writers than about 
the private life of poor Harlequin just mentioned, who 15 
possesses in common with these the power of making 
you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and 
stories your kind presence here shows that you have 
curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a great number of 
our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. 20 
The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct 
your love, your pity, your kindness — your scorn for un- 
truth, pretension, imposture— your tenderness for the 
weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the 
best of his means and ability he comments on all the 25 
ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes 
upon himself to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. 
Accordingly, as he finds, and speaks, and feels the truth 
best, we regard him, esteem him — sometimes love him. 
And, as his business is to mark other people's lives and 30 



212 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

peculiarities, we moralize upon his life when he is gone — 
and yesterday's preacher becomes the text for to-day's 
sermon. 

Of English parents, and of a good English family 
5 of clergymen, Swift was born in Dublin in 1667, seven 
months after the death of his father, who had come to 
practice there as a lawyer. The boy went to school at 
Kilkenny, and afterwards to Trinity College, Dublin, 
where he got a degree with difficulty, and was wild, and 

10 witty, and poor. In 1688, by the recommendation of 
his mother. Swift was received into the family of Sir 
William Temple, who had known Mrs. Swift in Ireland. 
He left his patron in 1694, and the next year took or- 
ders in Dublin. But he threw up the small Irish pre- 

15 ferment which he got and returned to Temple, in whose 
family he remained until Sir William's death in 1699. 
His hopes of advancement in England failing. Swift 
returned to Ireland, and took the living of Laracor. 
Hither he invited Hester Johnson, Temple's natural 

20 daughter, with whom he had contracted a tender friend- 
ship, while they were both dependents of Temple's. 
And with an occasional visit to England, Swift now 
passed nine years at home. 

In 1709 he came to England and, with a brief visit 

25 to Ireland, during which he took possession of his deanery 
of St. Patrick, he now passed five years in England, 
taking the most distinguished part in the political 
transactions which terminated with the death of Queen 
Anne. After her death, his party disgraced, and his 

30 hopes of ambition over, Swift returned to Dublin, where 



SWIFT 213 

he remained twelve years. In this time he wrote the 
famous Drapier^s Letters and Gulliver^s Travels. He 
married Hester Johnson, Stella, and buried Esther 
Vanhomrigh, Vanessa, who had followed him to Ire- 
land from London, where she had contracted a violent 5 
passion for him. In 1726 and 1727 Swift was in England, 
which he quitted for the last time on hearing of his 
wife's illness. Stella died in January, 1728, and Swift 
not until 1745, having passed the last five of the seventy- 
eight years of his life with an impaired intellect and 10 
keepers to watch him. 

You know, of course, that Swift has had many biog- 
raphers; his Hfe has been told by the kindest and most 
good-natured of men, Scott, who admires but can't 
bring himself to love him; and by stout old Johnson, 15 
who, forced to admit him into the company of poets, 
receives the famous Irishman, and takes off his hat to 
him with a bow of surly recognition, scans him from 
head to foot, and passes over to the other side of the 
street. Dr. Wilde of Dublin, who has written a most 20 
interesting volume on the closing years of Swift's life, 
calls Johnson "the most malignant of his biographers:" 
it is not easy for an English critic to please Irishmen — 
perhaps to try and please them. And yet Johnson truly 
admires Swift: Johnson does not quarrel with Swift's 25 
change of politics, or doubt his sincerity of religion: 
about the famous Stella and Vanessa controversy the 
Doctor does not bear very hardly on Swift. But he could 
not give the Dean that honest hand of his; the stout 
old man puts it into his breast, and moves off from him. 30 



214 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Would we have liked to live with him? That is a 
question which in dealing with these people's works, 
and thinking of their lives and peculiarities, every reader 
of biographies must put to himself. Would you have 
5 Hked to be a friend of the great Dean ? I should like to 
have been Shakespeare's shoeblack — just to have lived 
in his house, just to have worshiped him — to have run 
on his errands, and seen that sweet serene face. I should 
like, as a young man, to have lived on Fielding's stair- 

10 case in the Temple, and after helping him up to bed 
perhaps, and opening his door with his latchkey, to 
have shaken hands with him in the morning, and heard 
him talk and crack jokes over his breakfast and his mug 
of small beer. Who would not give something to pass 

15 a night at the club with Johnson, and Goldsmith, and 
James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck? The charm of 
Addison's companionship and conversation has passed to 
us by fond tradition — but Swift? If you had been his 
inferior in parts (and that, with a great respect for all 

20 persons present, I fear is only very likely), his equal in 
mere social station, he would have bullied, scorned, and 
insulted you; if, undeterred by his great reputation, you 
had met him like a man, he would have quailed before 
you, and not had the pluck to reply, and gone home, 

25 and years after written a foul epigram about you — 
watched for you in a sewer, and come out to assail you 
with a coward's blow and a dirty bludgeon. If you had 
been a lord with a blue ribbon, who flattered his vanity, 
or could help his ambition, he would have been the most 

30 deUghtful company in the world. He would have been 



SWIFT 215 

SO manly, so sarcastic, so bright, odd, and original, that 
you might think he had no object in view but the in- 
dulgence of his humor, and that he was the most reck- 
less, simple creature in the world. How he would have 
torn your enemies to pieces for you ! and made fun of the 5 
Opposition! His servility was so boisterous that it 
looked like independence; he would have done your 
errands, but with the air of patronizing you, and after 
fighting your battles, masked, in the street or the press, 
would have kept on his hat before your wife and daugh- 10 
ters in the drawing-room, content to take that sort of 
pay for his tremendous services as a bravo. 

He says as much himself in one of his letters to Boling- 
broke: — "All my endeavors to distinguish myself were 
only for want of a great title and fortune, that I might 15 
be used like a lord by those who have an opinion of my 
parts; whether right or wrong is no great matter. And 
so the reputation of wit and great learning does the office 
of a blue ribbon or a coach and six." 

Could there be a greater candor ? It is an outlaw who 20 
says, "These are my brains; with these I'll win titles 
and compete with fortune. These are my bullets; these 
I'll turn into gold;" and he hears the sound of coaches 
and six, takes the road like Macheath, and makes so- 
ciety stand and deliver. They are all on their knees 25 
before him. Down go my lord bishop's apron, and his 
Grace's blue ribbon, and my lady's brocade petticoat 
in the mud. He eases the one of a living, the other of a 
patent place, the third of a little snug post about the 
Court, and gives them over to followers of his own. The 30 



2l6 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

great prize has not come yet. The coach with the miter 
and crosier in it, which he intends to have for his share, 
has been delayed on the way from St. James's; and he 
waits and waits until nightfall, when his runners come 
5 and tell him that the coach has taken a different road, 
and escaped him. So he fires his pistols into the air with 
a curse, and rides away into his own country. 

Swift's seems to me to be as good a name to point a 
moral or adorn a tale of ambition, as any hero's that 

10 ever Kved and failed. But we must remember that the 
morality was lax — that other gentlemen besides himself 
took the road in his day — that public society was in a 
strange disordered condition, and the State was ravaged 
by other condottieri. The Boyne was being fought and 

15 won, and lost — the bells rung in William's victory, in 

the very same tone with which they would have pealed 

for James's. Men were loose upon politics, and had to 

' shift for themselves. They, as well as old beliefs and 

institutions, had lost their moorings and gone adrift in 

20 the storm. As in the South Sea Bubble, almost every- 
body gambled; as in the Railway mania — not many 
centuries ago — almost every one took his unlucky share: 
a man of that time, of the vast talents and ambition of 
Swift, could scarce do otherwise than grasp at his prize, 

25 and make his spring at his opportunity. His bitterness, 
his scorn, his rage, his subsequent misanthropy, are 
ascribed by some panegyrists to a deHberate conviction 
of mankind's unworthiness, and a desire to amend them 
by castigating. His youth was bitter, as that of a great 

30 genius bound down by ignoble ties, and powerless in a 



SWIFT 217 

mean dependence; his age was bitter, like that of a great 
genius that had fought the battle and nearly won it, 
and lost it, and thought of it afterwards writhing in a 
lonely exile. A man may attribute to the gods, if he 
likes, what is caused by his own fury, or disappoint- 5 
ment, or self-will. What public man — what statesman 
projecting a coup — what king determined on an inva- 
sion of his neighbor — what satirist meditating an on- 
slaught on society or an individual, can't give a pretext 
for his move? There was a French general the other 10 
day who proposed to march into this country and put 
it to sack and pillage, in revenge for humanity outraged 
by our conduct at Copenhagen: there is always some 
excuse for men of the aggressive turn. They are of their 
nature warlike, predatory, eager for fight, plunder, do- 15 
minion. 

As fierce a beak and talon as ever struck — as strong 
a wing as ever beat, belonged to Swift. I am glad, for 
one, that fate wrested the prey out of his claws, and cut 
his wings and chained him. One can gaze, and not 20 
without awe and pity, at the lonely eagle chained be- 
hind the bars. 

That Swift was born at No. 7 Hoey's Court, Dublin, 
on the 30th November, 1667, is a certain fact, of which 
nobody will deny the sister island the honor and glory; 25 
but, it seems to me, he was no more an Irishman than 
a man born of English parents at Calcutta is a Hindoo. 
Goldsmith was an Irishman, and always an Irishman: 
Steele was an Irishman, and always an Irishman: 
Swift's heart was English and in England, his habits 30 



2l8 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

English, his logic eminently English; his- statement is 
elaborately simple; he shuns tropes and metaphors, and 
uses his ideas and words with a wise thrift and economy, 
as he used his money: with which he could be generous 
5 and splendid upon great occasions, but which he hus- 
banded when there was no need to spend it. He never 
indulges in needless extravagance of rhetoric, lavish 
epithets, profuse imagery. He lays his opinion before 
you with a grave simplicity and a perfect neatness. 

10 Dreading ridicule too, as a man of his humor — above 
all an Englishman of his humor — certainly would, he 
is afraid to use the poetical power which he really pos- 
sessed; one often fancies in reading him that he dares 
not be eloquent when he might; that he does not speak 

15 above his voice, as it were, and the tone of society. 

His initiation into politics, his knowledge of business, 
his knowledge of polite life, his acquaintance with litera- 
ture even, which he could not have pursued very sedu- 
lously during that reckless career at DubHn, Swift got 

20 under the roof of Sir William Temple. He was fond of 
telling in after life what quantities of books he devoured 
there, and how King William taught him to cut aspara- 
gus in the Dutch fashion. It was at Shene and at Moor 
Park, with a salary of twenty pounds and a dinner at 

25 the upper servants' table, that this great and lonely 
Swift passed a ten years' apprenticeship — wore a cas- 
sock that was only not a livery — bent down a knee as 
proud as Lucifer's to supplicate my lady's good graces, 
or run on his honor's errands. It was here, as he was 

30 writing at Temple's table, or following his patron's 



SWIFT 219 

walk, that he saw and heard the men who had governed 
the great world — measured himself with them, looking 
up from his silent corner, gauged their brains, weighed 
their wits, turned them, and tried them, and marked 
them. Ah! what platitudes he must have heard! what 5 
feeble jokes! what pompous commonplaces! what small 
men they must have seemed under those enormous peri- 
wigs, to the swarthy, uncouth, silent Irish secretary. 
I wonder whether it ever struck Temple, that that 
Irishman was his master? I suppose that dismal con- 10 
viction did not present itself under the ambrosial wig, 
or Temple could never have lived with Swift. Swift 
sickened, rebelled, left the service — ate humble pie, and 
came back again; and so for ten years went on, gathering 
learning, swallowing scorn, and submitting with a 15 
stealthy rage to his fortune. 

Temple'^ style is the perfection of practiced and easy 
good breeding. If he does not penetrate very deeply 
into a subject, he professes a very gentlemanly acquain- 
tance with it; if he makes rather a parade of Latin, it 20 
was the custom of his day, as it was the custom for a 
gentleman to envelop his head in a periwig and his 
hands in lace ruffles. If he wears buckles and square- 
toed shoes, he steps in them with a consummate grace, 
and you never hear their creak, or find them treading : 
upon any lady's train or any rival's heels in the Court 
crowd. When that grows too hot or too agitated for 
him, he politely leaves it. He retires to his retreat of 
Shene or Moor Park; and lets the King's party and the 
Prince of Orange's party battle it out among themselves. 30 



2 20 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

He reveres the Sovereign (and no man perhaps ever 
testified to his loyalty by so elegant a bow); he admires 
the Prince of Orange; but there is one person whose ease 
and comfort he loves more than all the princes in Christ- 
5 endom, and that valuable member of society is himself 
Gulielmus Temple, Baronettus. One sees him in his 
retreat; between his study chair and his tulip beds, 
clipping his apricots and pruning his essays, — the states- 
man, the ambassador no more; but the philosopher, the 

10 Epicurean, the fine gentleman and courtier at St. James's 
as at Shene; where in place of kings and fair ladies, he 
pays his court to the Ciceronian majesty; or walks a 
minuet with the Epic Muse; or dallies by the south wall 
with the ruddy nymph of gardens. 

15 Temple seems to have received and exacted a pro- 
digious deal of veneration from his household, and to 
have been coaxed, and warmed, and cuddled by the 
people round about him, as delicately as any of the plants 
which he loved. When he fell ill in 1693, the household 

20 was aghast at his indisposition: mild Dorothea his wife, 
the best companion of the best of men — 

•' Mild Dorothea, peaceful, wise, and great, 
Trembling beheld the doubtful hand of fate." 

As for Dorinda — his sister — 

25 "Those who would grief describe, might come and trace 

Its watery footsteps in Dorinda's face. 

To see her wxep, joy every face forsook, 

And grief flung sables on each menial look. 

The humble tribe mourned for the quickening soul, 
30 That furnished spirit and motion through the whole." 



SWIFT 221 

Isn't that line in which grief is described as putting 
the menials into a mourning livery, a fine image? One 
of the menials wrote it, who did not like that Temple 
livery nor those twenty pound wages. Cannot one fancy 
the uncouth young servitor, with downcast eyes, books 5 
and papers in hand, following at his honor's heels in 
the garden walk; or taking his honor's orders as he stands 
by the great chair, where Sir William has the gout, and 
his feet all blistered with moxa ? When Sir William has 
the gout or scolds it must be hard work at the second 10 
table; the Irish secretary owned as much afterwards: 
and when he came to dinner, how he must have lashed 
and growled and torn the household with his gibes and 
scorn! What would the steward say about the pride 
of them Irish schollards— and this one had got no great 15 
credit even at his Irish college, if the truth were known — 
and what a contempt his Excellency's own gentleman 
must have had for Parson Teague from Dublin. (The 
valets and chaplains were always at war. It is hard to 
say which Swift thought the more contemptible.) And 20 
what must have been the sadness, the sadness and 
terror, of the housekeeper's little . daughter with the 
curling black ringlets and the sweet smiling face, when 
the secretary who teaches her to read and write, and 
whom she loves and reverences above all things — above 25 
mother, above mild Dorothea, above that tremendous 
Sir William in his square-toes and periwig, — when 
Mr. Swift comes down from his master with rage in 
his heart, and has not a kind word even for little Hester 
Johnson ? 30 



222 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Perhaps for the Irish secretary, his Excellency's con- 
descension was even more cruel than his frowns. Sir 
William would perpetually quote Latin and the ancient 
classics apropos of his gardens and his Dutch statues 
5 and plates -handeSj and talk about Epicurus and Diog- 
enes Laertius, Julius Caesar, Semiramis, and the gar- 
dens of the Hesperides, Maecenas, Strabo describing 
Jericho, and the Assyrian kings. Apropos of beans, he 
would mention Pythagoras's precept to abstain from 

10 beans, and that this precept probably meant that wise 
men should abstain from public affairs. He is a placid 
Epicurean; he is a Pythagorean philosopher; he is a wise 
man — that is the deduction. Does not Swift think so? 
One can imagine the downcast eyes Hfted up for a mo- 

ES ment, and the flash of scorn which they emit. Swift's 
eyes were as azure as the heavens; Pope says nobly (as 
everything Pope said and' thought of his friend was 
good and noble), "His eyes are as azure as the heavens, 
and have a charming archness in them." And one per- 

2o son in that household, that pompous, stately, kindly 
Moor Park, saw heaven nowhere else. 

But the Temple amenities and solemnities did not 
agree with Swift. He was half-killed with a surfeit of 
Shene pippins; and in a garden seat which he devised 

25 for himself at Moor Park, and where he devoured 
greedily the stock of books within his reach, he caught 
a vertigo and deafness which punished and tormented 
him through life. He could not bear the place or the 
servitude. Even in that poem of courtly condolence, 

30 from which we have quoted a few lines of mock melan- 



SWIFT 223 

choly, he breaks out of the funereal procession with a 
mad shriek, as it were, and rushes away crying his own 
grief, cursing his own fate, foreboding madness, and 
forsaken by fortune, and even hope. 

I don't know anything more melancholy than the 5 
letter to Temple, in which, after having broke from his 
bondage, the poor wretch crouches piteously towards 
his cage again, and deprecates his master's anger. He 
asks for testimonials for orders. "The particulars re- 
quired of me are what relate to morals and learning; 10 
and the reasons of quitting your honor's family — that 
is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill action. 
They are left entirely to your honor's mercy, though in 
the first I think I cannot reproach myself for anything 
further than for infirmities. This is all I dare at present 15 
beg from your honor, under circumstances of life not 
worth your regard: what is left me to wish (next to the 
health and prosperity of your honor and family) is that 
Heaven would one day allow me the opportunity of leav- 
ing my acknowledgments at your feet. I beg my most 20 
humble duty and service be presented to my ladies, your 
honor's lady and sister." — Can prostration fall deeper? 
could a slave bow lower ? 

Twenty years afterwards Bishop Kennet describing 
the same man, says, "Dr. Swift came into the coffee- 25 
house and had a bow from everybody but me. When 
I came to the antechamber [at Court] to wait before 
prayers. Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and 
business. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak 
to his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a place for 30 



224 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

a clergyman. He was promising Mr. Thorold to under- 
take with my Lord Treasurer, that he should obtain a 
salary of 200/. per annum as member of the English 
Church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., 
5 going in to the Queen with the red bag, and told him 
aloud, he had something to say to him from my Lord 
Treasurer. He took out his gold watch, and telling the 
time of day, complained that it was very late. A gentle- 
man said he was too fast. 'How can I help it,' says 

10 the Doctor, 'if the courtiers give me a watch that won't 
go right?' Then he instructed a young nobleman, that 
the best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who 
had begun a translation of Homer into English, for 
which he would have them all subscribe: 'For,' says 

15 he, 'he shall not begin to print till I have a thousand 
guineas for him.' Lord Treasurer, after leaving the 
Queen, came through the room beckoning Dr. Swift 
to follow him, — both went off just before prayers." 
There's a Httle malice in the Bishop's "just before 

20 prayers." 

This picture of the great Dean seems a true one, and 
is harsh, though not altogether unpleasant. He was 
doing good, and to deserving men too, in the midst of 
these intrigues and triumphs. His journals and a thou- 

25 sand anecdotes of him relate his kind acts and rough 
manners. His hand was constantly stretched out to 
reUeve an honest man — he was cautious about his 
money, but ready. — If you were in a strait would you 
like such a benefactor? I think I would rather have 

30 had a potato and a friendly word from Goldsmith than 



SWIFT 225 

have been beholden to the Dean for a guinea and a 
dinner. He insulted a man as he served him, made 
women cry, guests look foolish, bullied unlucky friends, 
and flung his benefactions into poor men's faces. No; 
the Dean was no Irishman — no Irishman ever gave but 5 
with a kind word and a kind heart. 

It is told, as if it were to Swift's credit, that the Dean 
of St. Patrick's performed his family devotions every 
morning regularly, but with such secrecy that the guests 
in his house were never in the least aware of the cere- lo 
mony. There was no need surely why a church dig- 
nitary should assemble his family privily in a crypt, and 
as if he was afraid of heathen persecution. But I think 
the world was right, and the bishops who advised Queen 
Anne, when they counseled her not to appoint the au- 15 
thor of the Tale 0} a Tub to a bishopric, gave perfectly 
good advice. The man who wrote the arguments and 
illustrations in that wild book, could not but be aware 
what must be the sequel of the propositions which he 
laid down. The boon companion of Pope and Boling- 20 
broke, who chose these as the friends of his life, and the 
recipients of his confidence and affection, must have 
heard many an argument, and joined in many a con- 
versation over Pope's port, or St. John's burgundy, 
which would not bear to be repeated at other men's 25 
boards. 

I know of few things more conclusive as to the sin- 
cerity of Swift's religion than his advice to poor John 
Gay to turn clergyman, and look out for a seat on the 
Bench. Gay, the author of the Beggar's Opera — Gay, 30 
Prose — 1 5 



226 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

the wildest of the wits about town — it was this man that 
Jonathan Swift advised to take orders — to invest in a 
cassock and bands — just as he advised him to husband 
his shilhngs and put his thousand pounds out at interest. 
5 The Queen, and the bishops, and the world, were right 
in mistrusting the religion of that man. 

I am not here, of course, to speak of any man's re- 
ligious views, except in so far as they influence his lit- 
erary character, his life, his humor. The most notorious 

10 sinners of all those fellow-mortals whom it is our busi- 
ness to discuss — Harry Fielding and Dick Steele, were 
especially loud, and I believe really fervent, in their ex- 
pressions of behef; they belabored freethinkers, and 
stoned imaginary atheists on all sorts of occasions, going 

15 out of their way to bawl their own creed, and persecute 
their neighbor's, and if they sinned and stumbled, as 
they constantly did with debt, with drink, with all sorts 
of bad behavior, they got upon their knees and cried 
"Peccavi" with a most sonorous orthodoxy. Yes; poor 

20 Harry Fielding and poor Dick Steele were trusty and 

undoubting Church of England men; they abhorred 

Popery, Atheism, and wooden shoes, and idolatries in 

general; and hiccupped Church and State with fervor. 

But Swift? His mind had had a different schoohng, 

25 and possessed a very different logical pow^r. He was 
not bred up in a tipsy guardroom, and did not learn 
to reason in a Covent Garden tavern. He could conduct 
an argument from beginning to end. He could see for- 
ward with a fatal clearness. In his old age, looking at 

30 the Tale oj a Tub, when he said, " Good God, what a 



SWIFT 227 

genius I had when I wrote that book!" I think he was 
admiring not the genius, but the consequences to which 
the genius had brought him — a vast genius, a magnifi- 
cent genius, a genius wonderfully bright, and dazzling, 
and strong, — to seize, to know, to see, to flash upon false- 5 
hood and scorch it into perdition, to penetrate into the 
hidden motives, and expose the black thoughts of men, — 
an awful, an evil spirit. 

Ah man! you, educated in Epicurean Temple's library, 
you whose friends were Pope and St. John — what made 10 
you to swear to fatal vows, and bind yourself to a life- 
long hypocrisy before the Heaven which you adored 
with such real wonder, humility, and reverence? For 
Swift was a reverent, was a pious spirit — for Swift could 
love and could pray. Through the storms and tempests 15 
of his furious mind, the stars of religion and love break 
out in the blue, shining serenely, though hidden by the 
driving clouds and the maddened hurricane of his life. 

It is my belief that he suffered frightfully from the 
consciousness of his own skepticism, and that he had 20 
bent his pride so far down as to put his apostasy out to 
hire. The paper left behind him, called Thoughts on 
Religion, is merely a set of excuses for not professing 
disbelief. He says of his sermons that he preached 
pamphlets: they have scarce a Christian characteristic; 25 
they might be preached from the steps of a synagogue, 
or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffeehouse 
almost. There is little or no cant — he is too great and 
too proud for that; and, in so far as the badness of his 
sermons goes, he is honest. But having put that cassock 30 



228 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

on, it poisoned him: he was strangled in his bands. 
He goes through Hfe, tearing, like a man possessed with 
a devil. Like Abudah in the Arabian story, he is always 
looking out for the Fury, and knows that the night will 
5 come and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, my 
God, it was! what a lonely rage and long agony — what 
a vulture that tore the heart of that giant ! It is awful to 
think of the great sufferings of this great man. Through 
life he always seems alone, somehow\ Goethe was so. 

10 I can't fancy Shakespeare otherwise. The giants must 

live apart. The kings have no company. But this 

man suffered so; and deserved so to suffer. One hardly 

reads anywhere of such a pain. 

The "saeva indignatio" of which he spoke as lacerat- 

15 ing his heart, and which he dares to inscribe on his 
tombstone — as if the wretch who lay under that stone 
waiting God's judgment had a right to be angry — breaks 
out from him in a thousand pages of his writing, and 
tears and rends him. Against men in office, he having 

20 been overthrown; against men in England, he having 
lost his chance of preferment there, the furious exile 
never fails to rage and curse. Is it fair to call the famous 
Drapier^s Letters patriotism! They are masterpieces of 
dreadful humor and invective: they are reasoned log- 

25 ically enough too, but the proposition is as monstrous 
and fabulous as the Lilliputian island. It is not that 
the grievance is so great, but there is his enemy — the 
assault is wonderful for its activity and terrible rage. 
It is Samson, with a bone in his hand, rushing on his 

30 enemies and felling them: one admires not the cause 



SWIFT ' 229 

so much as the strength, the anger, the fury of the 
champion. As is the case with madmen, certain sub- 
jects provoke him, and awaken his fits of wrath. Mar- 
riage is one of these; in a hundred passages in his 
writings he rages against it; rages against children; an 5 
object of constant satire, even more contemptible in his 
eyes than a lord's chaplain, is a poor curate with a large 
family. The idea of this luckless paternity never fails 
to bring down from him gibes and foul language. Could 
Dick Steele, or Goldsmith, or Fielding, in his most 10 
reckless moment of satire, have written anything like 
the Dean's famous "modest proposal" for eating chil- 
dren? Not one of these but melts at the thoughts of 
childhood, fondles and caresses it. Mr. Dean has no 
such softness, and enters the nursery with the tread and 15 
gayety of an ogre. "I have been assured," says he in 
the Modest Proposal, "by a very knowing American of 
my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, 
well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourish- 
ing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, 20 
or boiled; and I make no doubt it will equally serve in 
a ragoiit.^^ And taking up this pretty joke, as his way 
is, he argues it with perfect gravity and logic. He turns 
and twists this subject in a score of different ways: he 
hashes it; and he serves it up cold; and he garnishes it; 25 
and relishes it always. He describes the Httle animal 
as "dropped from its dam," advising that the mother 
should let it suck plentifully in the last month, so as to 
render it plump and fat for a good table! "A child," 
says his Reverence, "will make two dishes at an enter- 30 



230 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

tainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, 
the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish," 
and so on; and, the subject being so delightful that he 
can't leave it, he proceeds to recommend, in place of 
5 venison for squires' tables, "the bodies of young lads 
and maidens not exceeding fourteen or under twelve." 
Amiable humorist! laughing castigator of morals! 
There was a process well known and practiced in the 
Dean's gay days: when a lout entered the coffeehouse, 

10 the wags proceeded to what they called "roasting" him. 
This is roasting a subject with a vengeance. The Dean 
had a native genius for it. As the Almanack des 
Gourmands says. On natt rotisseur. 

And it was not merely by the sarcastic method that 

15 Swift exposed the unreasonableness of loving and hav- 
ing children. In Gulliver, the folly of love and mar- 
riage is urged by graver arguments and advice. In the 
famous Lilliputian kingdom. Swift speaks with approval 
of the practice of instantly removing children from their 

20 parents and educating them by the State; and amongst 
his favorite horses, a pair of foals are stated to be the 
very utmost a well-regulated equine couple would per- 
mit themselves. In fact, our great satirist was of opinion 
that conjugal love was unadvisable, and illustrated the 

25 theory by his own practice and example — God help 
him — which made him about the most wretched being 
in God's world. 

The grave and logical conduct of an absurd proposi- 
tion, as exemplified in the cannibal proposal just men- 

30 tioned, is our author's constant method through all his 



SWIFT 231 

works of humor. Given a country of people six inches 
or sixty feet high, and by the mere process of the logic, 
a thousand wonderful absurdities are evolved, at so 
many stages of the calculation. Turning to the first 
minister who waited behind him with a white staff near 5 
as tall as the mainmast of the "Royal Sovereign," the 
King of Brobdingnag observes how contemptible a 
thing human grandeur is, as represented by such a con- 
temptible little creature as Gulliver. "The Emperor 
of LiUiput's features are strong and masculine" (what 10 
a surprising humor there is in this description!) — "The 
Emperor's features," Gulliver says, "are strong and 
masculine, with an Austrian lip, an arched nose, his 
complexion oHve, his countenance erect, his body and 
Hmbs well proportioned, and his deportment majestic. 15 
He is taller by the breadth of my nail than any of his 
court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into be- 
holders." 

What a surprising humor there is in these descrip- 
tions! How noble the satire is here! how just and honest! 20 
How perfect the image! Mr. Macaulay has quoted the 
charming lines of the poet, where the king of the pygmies 
is measured by the same standard. We have all read 
in Milton of the spear that was like "-the mast of some 
tall admiral," but these images are purely likely to come 25 
to the comic poet originally. The subject is before him. 
He is turning it in a thousand ways. He is full of it. 
The figure suggests itself naturally to him, and comes 
out of his subject, as in that wonderful passage, when 
Gulliver's box having been dropped by the eagle into 30 



232 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

the sea, and Gulliver having been received into the 
ship's cabin, he calls upon the crew to bring the box 
into the cabin, and put it on the table, the cabin being 
only a quarter the size of the box. It is the veracity of 
5 the blunder which is so admirable. Had a man come 
from such a country as Brobdingnag he would have 
blundered so. 

But the best stroke of humor, if there be a best in 
that abounding book, is that where Gulliver, in the un- 

10 pronounceable country, describes his parting from his 
master the horse. "I took," he says, "a second leave 
of my master, but as I was going to prostrate myself to 
kiss his hoof, he did me the honor to raise it gently to 
my mouth. I am not ignorant how much I have been 

15 censured for mentioning this last particular. Detrac- 
tors are pleased to think it improbable that so illustrious 
a person should descend to give so great a mark of dis- 
tinction to a creature so inferior as I. Neither have I 
forgotten how apt some travelers are to boast of ex- 

20 traordinary favors they have received. But if these 
censurers were better acquainted with the noble and 
courteous disposition of the Houyhnhnms they would 
soon change their opinion." 

The surprise here, the audacity of circumstantial evi- 

25 dence, the astounding gravity of the speaker, who is 
not ignorant how much he has been censured, the na- 
ture of the favor conferred, and the respectful exultation 
at the receipt of it, are surely complete; it is truth topsy- 
turvy, entirely logical and absurd. 

30 As for the humor and conduct of this famous fable, I 



SWIFT 233 

suppose there is no person who reads but must admire; 
as for the moral, I think it horrible, shameful, unmanly, 
blasphemous; and giant and great as this Dean is, I 
say we should hoot him. Some of this audience mayn't 
have read the last part of Gulliver, and to such I would 5 
recall the advice of the venerable Mr. Punch to persons 
about to marry, and say "Don't." When GuUiver first 
lands among the Yahoos, the naked howling wretches 
clamber up trees and assault him, and he describes him- 
self as "almost stifled with the filth which fell about 10 
him." The reader of the fourth part of Gidlivefs Travels 
is Kke the hero himself in this instance. It is Yahoo 
language: a monster gibbering shrieks, and gnashing im- 
precations against mankind — tearing down all shreds of 
modesty, past all sense of manliness and shame; filthy 15 
in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging, obscene. 

And dreadful it is to think that Swift knew the ten- 
dency of his creed — the fatal rocks towards which his 
logic desperately drifted. That last part of Gulliver is 
only a consequence of what has gone before; and the 20 
worthlessness of all mankind, the pettiness, cruelty, 
pride, imbecility, the general vanity, the foolish pre- 
tension, the mock greatness, the pompous dullness, the 
mean aims, the base successes — all these were present 
to him; it was with the din of these curses of the world, 25 
blasphemies against heaven, shrieking in his ears, that 
he began to write his dreadful allegory — of which the 
meaning is that man is utterly wicked, desperate, and 
imbecile, and his passions are so monstrous, and his 
boasted powers so mean, that he is and deserves to be 30 



234 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

the slave of brutes, and ignorance is better than his 
vaunted reason. What had this man done? what secret 
remorse was rankHng at his heart? what fever was 
boiHng in him, that he should see all the world blood- 
5 shot? We view the world with our own eyes, each of 
us; and we make from within us the world we see. A 
weary heart gets no gladness out of sunshine; a selfish 
man is skeptical about friendship, as a man with no ear 
doesn't care for music. A frightful self-consciousness it 

lo must have been, which looked on mankind so darkly 
through those keen eyes of Swift. 

A remarkable story is told by Scott, of Delany, who 
interrrupted Archbishop King and Swift in a conver- 
sation which left the prelate in tears, and from which 

15 Swift rushed away with marks of strong terror and agi- 
tation in his countenance, upon which the Archbishop 
said to Delany, "You have just met the most unhappy 
man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you 
must never ask a question." ■ 

20 The most unhappy man on earth; — Miserrimus — 
what a character of him! And at this time all the great 
wits of England had been at his feet. All Ireland had 
shouted after him, and worshiped him as a liberator, 
a savior, the greatest Irish patriot and citizen. Dean 

25 Drapier Bickerstaff GulHver — the most famous states- 
men, and the greatest poets of his day, had applauded 
him, and done him homage; and at this time, writing 
over to Bolingbroke from Ireland, he says, "It is time 
for me to have done with the world, and so I would if 

30 I could get into a better before I was called into the 



SWIFT 235 

best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a 
hole.^^ 

We have spoken about the men, and Swift's behavior 
to them; and now it behooves us not to forget that there 
are certain other persons in the creation who had rather 5 
intimate relations with the great Dean. Two women 
whom he loved and injured are known by every reader 
of books so familiarly that if we had seen them, or if 
they had been relatives of our own, we scarcely could 
have known them better. Who hasn't in his mind an 10 
image of Stella? Who does not love her? Fair and 
tender creature: pure and affectionate heart! Boots it 
to you, now that you have been at rest for a hundred 
and twenty years, not divided in death from the cold 
heart which caused yours, whilst it beat, such faithful 15 
pangs of love and grief — boots it to you now, that the 
whole world loves and deplores you ? Scarce any man, 
I believe, ever thought of that grave, that did not cast 
a flower of pity on it, and write over it a sweet epitaph. 
Gentle lady, so lovely, so loving, so unhappy! you have 20 
had countless champions; milHons of manly hearts 
mourning for you. From generation to generation we 
take up the fond tradition of your beauty; we watch 
and follow your tragedy, your bright morning love and 
purity, your constancy, your grief, your sweet martyr- 25 
dom. We know your legend by heart. You are one of 
the saints of English story. 

And if Stella's love and innocence are charming to 
contemplate, I will say that in spite of ill-usage, in spite 
of drawbacks, in spite of mysterious separation and 30 



236 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

union, of hope delayed and sickened heart — in the 
teeth of Vanessa, and that Httle episodical aberration 
which plunged Swift into such woeful pitfalls and quag- 
mires of amorous perplexity — in spite of the verdicts of 
5 most women, I believe, who, as far as my experience 
and conversation go, generally take Vanessa's part in 
the controversy — in spite of the tears which Swift caused 
Stella to shed, and the rocks and barriers which fate 
and temper interposed, and which prevented the pure 

10 course of that true love from running smoothly — the 
brightest part of Swift's story, the pure star in that dark 
and tempestuous Hfe of Swift's, is his love for Hester 
Johnson. It has been my business, professionally of 
course, to go through a deal of sentimental reading in 

15 my time, and to acquaint myself with love-making, as 
it has been described in various languages, and at various 
ages of the world; and I know of nothing more manly, 
more tender, more exquisitely touching, than some of 
these brief notes, written in what Swift calls "his little 

20 language" in his journal to Stella. He writes to her 
night and morning often. He never sends away a letter 
to her but he begins a new one on the same day. He 
can't bear to let go her kind Httle hand, as it were. He 
knows that she is thinking of him, and longing for him 

25 far away in DubHn yonder. He takes her letters from 
under his pillow and talks to them, familiarly, paternally, 
with fond epithets and pretty caresses — as he would to 
the sweet and artless creature who loved him. "Stay," 
he writes one morning — it is the 14th of December, 

30 17 10 — "Stay, I will answer some of your letter this 



SWIFT 237 

morning in bed. Let me see. Come and appear, litde 
letter! Here I am, says he, and what say you to Stella 
this morning fresh and fasting? And can Stella read 
this writing without hurting her dear eyes?" he goes on, 
after more kind prattle and fond whispering. The dear 5 
eyes shine clearly upon him then — the good angel of 
his life is with him and blessing him. Ah, it was a hard 
fate that wrung from them so many tears, and stabbed 
pitilessly that pure and tender bosom. A hard fate: 
but would she have changed it? I have heard a woman 10 
say that she would have taken Swift's cruelty to have 
had his tenderness. He had a sort of worship for her 
whilst he wounded her. He speaks of her after she is 
gone; of her wit, of her kindness, of her grace, of her 
beauty, with a simple love and reverence that are in- 15 
describably touching; in contemplation of her goodness 
his hard heart melts into pathos; his cold rhyme kindles 
and glows into poetry, and he falls down on his knees, 
so to speak, before the angel whose Hfe he had embittered, 
confesses his own wretchedness and unworthiness, and 20 
adores her with cries of remorse and love: — 

" When on my sickly couch I lay, 
Impatient both of night and day, 
And groaning in unmanly strains, 

Called every power to ease my pains, 25 

Then Stella ran to my relief, 
With cheerful face and inward grief, 
And though by heaven's severe decree 
She suffers hourly more than me, 

No cruel master could require -^o 

From slaves employed for daily hire, 



238 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

What Stella, by her friendship warmed, 
With vigor and delight performed. 
Now, \\Tith a soft and silent tread, 
Unheard she moves about my bed : 
r My sinking spirits now supplies 

With cordials in her hands and eyes. 
Best pattern of true friends ! beware ; 
You pay too dearly for your care 
If, while your tenderness secures 
10 My life, it must endanger yours: 

For such a fool was never found 
Who pulled a palace to the ground, 
Only to have the ruins made 
Materials for a house decayed." 

15 One little triumph Stella had in her life — one dear 
little piece of injustice was performed in her favor, for 
which I confess, for my part, I can't help thanking fate 
and the Dean. That other person was sacrificed to her — 
that — that young woman, who lived five doors from 

20 Dr. Swift's lodgings in Bury Street, and who flattered 
him, and made love to him in such an outrageous man- 
ner — ^Vanessa was thrown over. 

Swift did not keep Stella's letters to him in reply to 
those he wrote to her. He kept Bolingbroke's, and 

25 Pope's, and Harley's, and Peterborough's: but Stella, 
"very carefully," the Lives say, kept Swift's. 'Of course: 
that is the way of the world: and so we cannot tell what 
her style was, or of what sort were the little letters which 
the Doctor placed there at night, and bade to appear 

30 from under his pillow of a morning. But in Letter IV. 
of that famous collection he describes his lodging in 
Bury Street, where he has the first floor, a dining room 



SWIFT 239 

and bedchamber, at eight shilHngs a week; and in Let- 
ter VI. he says " he has visited a lady just come to town," 
whose name somehow is not mentioned; and in Letter 
VIII. he enters a query of Stella's — "What do you mean 
'that boards near me, that I dine with now and then?' 5 
What the deuce! You know whom I have dined with 
every day since I left you, better than I do." Of course 
she does. Of course Swift has not the slighest idea of 
what she means. But in a few letters more it turns out 
that the Doctor has been to dine "gravely" with a 10 
Mrs. Vanhomrigh: then that he has been to "his neigh- 
bor:" then that he has been unwell, and means to dine 
for the whole week with his neighbor! Stella was quite 
right in her previsions. She saw from the very first 
hint, what was going to happen; and scented Vanessa 15 
in the air. The rival is at the Dean's feet. The pupil 
and teacher are reading together, and drinking tea to- 
gether, and going to prayers together, and learning Latin 
together, and conjugating amo, amas, amavi together. 
The little language is over for poor Stella. By the rule 20 
of grammar and the course of conjugation, doesn't 
amavi come after amo and amas? 

The loves of Cadenus and Vanessa you may peruse 
in Cadenus's own poem on the subject, and in poor 
Vanessa's vehement expostulatory verses and letters to 25 
him; she adores him, implores him, admires him, thinks 
him something godlike, and only prays to be admitted 
to lie at his feet. As they are bringing him home from 
church, those divine feet of Dr. Swift's are found pretty 
often in Vanessa's parlor. He likes to be admired and 30 



240 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

adored. He finds Miss Vanhomrigh to be a woman of 
great taste and spirit, and beauty and wit, and a fortune 
too. He sees her every day; he does not tell Stella about 
the business: until the impetuous Vanessa becomes too 
5 fond of him, until the Doctor is quite frightened by the 
young woman's ardor, and confounded by her warmth. 
He wanted to marry neither of them — that I believe was 
the truth; but if he had not married Stella, Vanessa 
would have had him in spite of himself. When he went 

10 back to Ireland, his Ariadne, not content to remain in her 
isle, pursued the fugitive Dean. In vain he protested, 
he vowed, he soothed, and bullied; the news of the 
Dean's marriage with Stella at last came to her, and it 
killed her — she died of that passion. 

15 And when she died, and Stella heard that Swift had 
written beautifully regarding her, "That doesn't sur- 
prise me," said Mrs. Stella, "for we all know the Dean 
could write beautifully about a broomstick." A woman 
— a true woman! Would you have had one of them 

20 forgive the other? 

In a note in his biography, Scott says that his friend 
Dr. Tuke, of Dublin, has a lock of Stella's hair, in- 
closed in a paper by Swift, on which are written, in the 
Dean's hand, the words: ^^ Only a woman^s hair.'^ An 

25 instance, says Scott, of the Dean's desire to veil his 
feelings under the mask of cynical indifference. 

See the various notions of critics! Do those words 
indicate indifference or an attempt to hide feeling? 
Did you ever hear or read four words more pathetic? 

30 Only a woman's hair: only love, only fidelity, only 



SWIFT 241 

purity, innocence, beauty; only the tenderest heart in 
the world stricken and wounded, and passed away now 
out of reach of pangs of hope deferred, love insulted, and 
pitiless desertion: — only that lock of hair left; and mem- 
ory and remorse, for the guilty, lonely wretch, shudder- 5 
ing over the grave of his victim. 

And yet to have had so much love, he must have given 
some. Treasures of wit and wisdom, and tenderness, 
too, must that man have had locked up in the caverns 
of his gloomy heart, and shown fitfully to one or two 10 
whom he took in there. But it was not good to visit 
that place. People did not remain there long, and 
suffered for having been there. He shrank away from 
all affections sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa both 
died near him, and away from him. He had not heart ^5 
enough to see them die. He broke from his fastest 
friend, Sheridan; he slunk away from his fondest ad- 
mirer, Pope. His laugh jars on one's ears after seven- 
score years. He was always alone — alone and gnashing 
in the darkness, except when Stella's sweet smile came 20 
and shone upon him. When that went, silence and utter 
night closed over him. An immense genius: an awful 
downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, 
that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling. 
We have other great names to mention — none I think, 25 
however, so great or so gloomy. 



Prose — 16 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

[John Henry Newman was born in London, February 21, 1801. 
Having been graduated in 1820 from Trinity College, Oxford, he 
was elected Fellow of Oriel College in 1822. In 1828 Newman, 
already a recognized figure in the scholastic world, was presented 
to the vicarage of St. Mary's, Oxford, and soon began that series 
of sermons and Tracts for the Times, which were to point the way 
for the famous Oxford movement. At first a defender of the 
Church of England, Newman found himself gradually alienated 
from the Anglican authorities, and, in October, 1845, ^^ was ad- 
mitted to the Roman Catholic communion. He was later made a 
Cardinal in the Roman church. It was while serving as Rector at 
the Catholic University in Dublin, to which position he was ap- 
pointed in 1852, that the lectures on The Idea of a University .ixova. 
which the following essay is selected, were delivered. The greater 
part of Newman's published work is on doctrinal or theological 
themes. Of these w^orks perhaps TJie Development of Christian 
Doctrine, Apologia pro Vita Snd, the Grammar of Assent, and the 
two works of fiction Loss and Gain and Callista are best known. 
Newman died in 1890-] 

Newman applied himself to the duties of his position 
as Rector of the Catholic University, DubHn, with the 
same seriousness that he had taken to the treatment of 
the stirring religious problems of his earlier life. In a 
very real sense he consecrated himself to the task of- 
leading young minds into higher ways. And he de- 
termined to appeal to them on every side of their spiritual 
natures. 

This purposeful devotion to a single definite end is 
242 



J 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 243 

very clear in the essay on Literature before us. For 
Newman's style and structure are as definite as is his 
purpose. Newman was one of the few seers who are 
able to subordinate imagination to reason. He never 
surrenders the appeal to the heart, but we are made to 
feel that he refuses to express all the emotion that he 
knows. 

The theme of Newman's essay on Literature is some- 
what apart from his main interests, yet in this essay, as 
fully as in any he ever wrote, is the man Newman mani- 
fested. He was a man of catholic tastes, his reading 
was carefully selected from a broad field of classic litera- 
ture and philosophy, and his memory was unusually re- 
tentive. In this essay are represented not only the wide 
scope of Newman's intellectual interests, but the masterly 
orderliness of his mental processes and the metaphysical 
inclinations of his mind. Newman was never afraid 
to permit the skeleton of his literary structure to show. 
He had remarkably developed the gift of vivifying any 
theme he treated, yet through the finished product the 
process of construction always was manifest. 

The essay on Literature evidences also the author's 
homiletical training. It advances through ten stately 
periods from the exordium, in which the interrogation is 
broached, to the homily in which the spiritual truths 
are applied to concrete facts. No essay of the century 
displays better balance among the parts than does this. 
Furthermore, the speaker never forgets that there are 
three parties to a public address, — the theme, the speaker, 
and the audience. Unlike Pater, who weaves his tapestry 
like Penelope, in sublime unconcern of all save the joys 
of concrete design, Newman scrupulously strives for 
understanding on the part of that indispensable third 
party, the audience. In a letter dated April, 1869, while 
he was at work on his Grammar of Assent^ Newman ac- 
knowledges, "I think I never have written for writing's 



244 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

sake; but my one and single desire and aim has been to 
do what is so difficult, viz. to express clearly and exactly 
my meaning." And so his essays and addresses show 
the most complicated design of ever recurring retrospec- 
tive reference. To read Newman is to understand him. 
Pater toils with tender solicitude over his style; Newman 
with gentle insistence over his reader. 

Newman was a natural stylist. Being what he was 
he perforce wrote as he did. But he was not an un- 
conscious artist. He applied to composition those deli- 
cately attenuated ideals that made his life a benediction 
and a martyrdom. He had, as he himself said, "an 
incommunicable simplicity" that came from dwelling 
in high places. There was in him something of the 
sweetness of Matthew Arnold without that writer's mel- 
lowness of temper. Avoiding exaggeration as vulgarity 
he also avoided the other extreme of intellectual naked- 
ness. Perhaps no writer has less of the sensuous appeal 
of color and atmosphere, yet he is saved from chill by 
the very power of his thinking. So flexible is his dic- 
tion, so rhythmic is the pulse and swell of his thought, 
that he often attains that most unusual of all perorations, 
the climax upon a course of abstract reasoning. 

No one can as well express Newman's attainments 
in style as he himself has done in treating the ideal 
characteristics of the great author. In Newman's style 
the ideal and its accomplishment seem to be joined. 
"He writes passionately, because he feels keenly; for- 
cibly, because he conceives vividly; he sees too clearly 
to be vague; he is too serious to be otiose; he can ana- 
lyze his subject, and therefore he is rich; he embraces 
it as a whole and in its parts, and therefore he is con- 
sistent; he has a firm hold of it, and therefore he is lumi- 
nous. When his imagination wells up, it overflows in 
ornament; when his heart is touched, it thrills along his 
verse. He always has the right word for the right idea, 



LITERATURE 245 

and never a word too much. If he is brief, it is because 
few words suffice; when he is lavish of them, still each 
word has its mark, and aids, not embarrasses, the vig- 
orous march of his elocution." 

LITERATURE 



Wishing to address you, Gentlemen, at the com- 
mencement of a new Session, I tried to find a subject 
for discussion, which might be at once suitable to the 
occasion, yet neither too large for your time, nor too 
minute or abstruse for your attention. I think I see one 5 
for my purpose in the very title of your Faculty. It 
is the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. Now the 
question may arise as to what is meant by " Philosophy," 
and what is meant by "Letters." As to the other Fac- 
ulties, the subject-matter which they profess is intelli- 10 
gible, as soon as named, and beyond all dispute. We 
know what Science is, what Medicine, what Law, and 
what Theology; but we have not so much ease in de- 
termining what is meant by Philosophy and Letters. 
Each department of that twofold province needs ex- 15 
planation: it will be sufficient, on an occasion Hke this, 
to investigate one of them. Accordingly I shall select 
for remark the latter of the two, and attempt to de- 
termine what we are to understand by Letters or Lit- 
erature, in what Literature consists, and how it stands 20 
relatively to Science. We speak, for instance, of ancient 
and modern literature, the literature of the day, sacred 
literature, light hterature; and our lectures in this place 



246 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

are devoted to classical literature and English literature. 
Are Letters, then, synonymous with books? This can- 
not be, or they would include in their range Philosophy, 
Law, and, in short, the teaching of all the other Fac- 
5 ulties. Far from confusing these various studies, we 
view the works of Plato or Cicero sometimes as philos- 
ophy, sometimes as literature; on the other hand, no 
one would ever be tempted to speak of Euclid as lit- 
erature, or of Matthiae's Greek Grammar. Is, then, 

10 literature synonymous with composition? with books 
written with an attention to style? is literature fine 
writing? again, is it studied and artificial writing? 

There are excellent persons who seem to adopt this 
last account of Literature as their own idea of it. They 

15 depreciate it, as if it were the result of a mere art or trick 
of words. Professedly indeed, they are aiming at the 
Greek and Roman classics, but their criticisms have 
quite as great force against all literature as against any. 
I think I shall be best able to bring out what I have to 

20 say on the subject by examining the statements which 
they make in defense of their own view of it. They 
contend then, I. that fine writing, as exemplified in the 
Classics, is mainly a matter of conceits, fancies, and 
prettinesses, decked out in choice words; 2. that this is 

25 the proof of it, that the classics will not bear translating; — 
(and this is why I have said that the real attack is upon 
literature altogether, not the classical only; for, to speak 
generally, all literature, modern as well as ancient, lies 
under this disadvantage. This, however, they will not 

30 allow; for they maintain), 3. that Holy Scripture pre- 



LITERATURE 247 

sents a remarkable contrast to secular writings on this 
very point, viz., in that Scripture does easily admit of 
translation, though it is the most sublime and beautiful 
of all writings. 



Now I will begin by stating these three positions in 5 
the words of a writer, who is cited by the estimable 
CathoHcs in question as a witness, or rather as an ad- 
vocate, in their behalf, though he is far from being able 
in his own person to challenge the respect which is in- 
spired by themselves. 10 

"There are two sorts of eloquence," says this writer, 
"the one indeed scarce deserves the name of it, which 
consists chiefly in labored and polished periods, an 
over-curious and artificial arrangement of figures, tin- 
selled over with a gaudy embellishment of words, which 15 
glitter, but convey little or no light to the understanding. 
This kind of writing is for the most part much affected 
and admired by the people of weak judgment and vicioui 
taste; but it is a piece of affectation and formality the 
sacred writers are utter strangers to. It is a vain and 20 
boyish eloquence; and, as it has always been esteemed 
below the great geniuses of all ages, so much more so 
with respect to those writers who were actuated by the 
spirit of Infinite Wisdom, and therefore wrote with that 
force and majesty with which never man writ. The 25 
other sort of eloquence is quite the reverse to this, and 
which may be said to be the true characteristic of the 
Holy Scriptures; where the excellence does not arise 



248 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

from a labored and far-fetched elocution, but from a 
surprising mixture of simplicity and majesty, which is 
a double character, so difficult to be united that it is 
seldom to be met with in compositions merely human. 
5 We see nothing in Holy Writ of affectation and super- 
fluous ornament . . . Now, it is observable that the 
most excellent profane authors, whether Greek or Latin, 
lose most of their graces whenever we find them Hterally 
translated. Homer's famed representation of Jupiter — 

10 his cried-up description of a tempest, his relation of 
Neptune's shaking the earth and opening it to its center, 
his description of Pallas's horses, with numbers of other 
long-since admired passages, flag, and almost vanish 
away, in the vulgar Latin translation. 

15 "Let any one but take the pains to read the common 
Latin interpretations of Virgfl, Theocritus, or even of 
Pindar, and one may venture to aflir n he will be able 
to trace out but few remains of the graces which charmed 
him so much in the original. The natural conclusion 

20 from hence is, that in the classical authors, the expres- 
sion, the sweetness of the numbers, occasioned by a 
musical placing of words, constitute a great part of their 
beauties; whereas, in the sacred writings, they consist 
more in the greatness of the things themselves than in 

25 the words and expressions. The ideas and conceptions 
are so great and lofty in their own nature that they 
necessarily appear magnificent in the most artless dress. 
Look but into the Bible, and we see them shine through 
the most simple and literal translations. That glorious 

30 description which Moses gives of the creation of the 



LITERATURE 249 

heavens and the earth, which Longinus . . . was 
so greatly taken with, has not lost the least whit of its 
intrinsic worth, and though it has undergone so many 
translations, yet triumphs over all, and breaks forth with 
as much force and vehemence as in the original. ... 5 
In the history of Joseph, where Joseph makes himself 
known, and weeps aloud upon the neck of his dear 
brother Benjamin, that all the house of Pharaoh heard 
him, at that instant none of his brethren are introduced 
as uttering aught, either to express their present joy or 10 
palliate their former injuries to him. On all sides there 
immediately ensues a deep and solemn silence; a silence 
infinitely more eloquent and expressive than anything 
else that could have been substituted in its place. Had 
Thucydides, Herodotus, Livy, or any of the celebrated 15 
classical historians, been employed in writing this his- 
tory, when they came to this point they would doubt- 
less have exhausted all their fund of eloquence in fur- 
nishing Joseph's brethren with labored and studied 
harangues, which, however fine they might have been 20 
in themselves, would nevertheless have been unnatural, 
and altogether improper on the occasion." ^ 

This is eloquently written, but it contains, I consider, 
a mixture of truth and falsehood, which it will be my 
business to discriminate from each other. Far be it from 25 
me to deny the unapproachable grandeur and simplicity 
of Holy Scripture; but I shall maintain that the classics 
are, as human compositions, simple and majestic and 
natural too. I grant that Scripture is concerned with 
1 Sterne, Sermon xlii. 



250 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

things, but I will not grant that classical literature is 
simply concerned with words. I grant that human 
literature is often elaborate, but I will maintain that 
elaborate composition is not unknown to the writers of 
5 Scripture. I grant that human Uterature cannot easily 
be translated out of the particular language to which 
it belongs; but it is not at all the rule that Scripture can 
easily be translated either; — and now I address myself 
to my task: — 



10 Here, then, in the first place, I observe. Gentlemen, 
that Literature, from the derivation of the word, implies 
writing, not speaking; this, however, arises from the 
circumstance of the copiousness, variety, and public 
circulation of the matters of which it consists. What is 

15 spoken cannot outrun the range of the speaker's voice, 
and perishes in the uttering. When words are in de- 
mand to express a long course of thought, when they 
have to be conveyed to the ends of the earth, or perpet- 
uated for the benefit of posterity, they must be written 

20 down, that is, reduced to the shape of literature; still, 
properly speaking, the terms, by which we denote this 
characteristic gift of man, belong to its exhibition by 
means of the voice, not of handwriting. It addresses 
itself, in its primary idea, to the ear, not to the eye. We 

25 call it the power of speech, we call it language, that is, 
the use of the tongue; and, even when we write, we still 
keep in mind what was its original instrument, for we 
use freely such terms in our books as "saying," "speak- 



LITEiL/^TURE 25 1 

ing," "telling," "talking," "calling;" we use the terms 
"phraseology" and "diction;" as if we were still ad- 
dressing ourselves to the ear. 

Now I insist on this, because it shows that speech, and 
therefore literature, which is its permanent record, is 5 
essentially a personal work. It is not some production 
or result, attained by the partnership of several persons, 
or by machinery, or by any natural process, but in its 
very idea it proceeds, and must prcceed, from some one 
given individual. Two persons cannot be the authors of 10 
the sounds which strike our ear; and, as they cannot be 
speaking one and the same speech, neither can they be 
writing one and the same lecture or discourse," — which 
must certainly belong to some one person or other, and 
is the expression of that one person's ideas and feelings, 15 
• — ideas and feelings personal to himself, though others 
may have parallel and similar ones,^ — proper to himself, 
in the same sense as his voice, his air, his countenance, 
his carriage, and his action, are personal. In other 
words. Literature expresses, not objective truth, as it is 20 
called, but subjective; not things, but thoughts. 

Now this doctrine will become clearer by considering 
another use of words, which does relate to objective 
truth, or to things; which relates to matters, not per- 
sonal, not subjective to the individual, but which, even 25 
were there no individual man in the whole world to 
know them or to talk about them, would exist still. 
Such objects become the matter of Science, and words 
indeed are used to express them, but such words are 
rather symbols than language, and however many we 30 



252 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

use, and however we may perpetuate them by writing, 
we never could make any kind of Hterature out of them, 
or call them by that name. Such, for instance, would 
be Euclid's Elements; they relate to truths universal and 
5 eternal; they are not mere thoughts, but things: they 
exist in themselves, not by virtue of our understanding 
them, not in dependence upon our will, but in what is 
called the nature of things, or at least on conditions ex- 
ternal to us. The words, then, in which they are set 

10 forth are not language, speech, literature, but rather, as 
I have said, symbols. And, as a proof of it, you will 
recollect that it is possible, nay usual, to set forth the 
propositions of Euclid in algebraical notation, which, 
as all would admit, has nothing to do with literature. 

^5 What is true of mathematics is true also of every study, 
so far forth as it is scientific; it makes use of words as 
the mere vehicle of things, and is thereby withdrawn 
from the province of literature. Thus metaphysics, 
ethics, law, political economy, chemistry, theology, cease 

20 to be literature in the same degree as they are capable 
of a severe scientific treatment. And hence it is that 
Aristotle's works on the one hand, though at first sight 
Hterature, approach in character, at least a great num- 
ber of them, to mere science; for even though the things 

25 which he treats of and exhibits may not always be real 
and true, yet he treats them as if they were, not as if 
they were the thoughts of his own mind; that is, he treats 
them scientifically. On the other hand, Law or Natural 
History has before now been treated by an author with 

30 so much of coloring derived from his own mind as to 



LITERATURE 253 

become a sort of literature; this is especially seen in the 
instance of Theology, when it takes the shape of Pulpit 
Eloquence. It is seen too in historical composition, 
which becomes a mere specimen of chronology, or a 
chronicle, when divested of the philosophy, the skill, or 5 
the party and personal feelings of the particular writer. 
Science, then, has to do with things, literature with 
thoughts; science is universal, literature is personal; 
science uses words merely as symbols, but literature uses 
language in its full compass, as including phraseology, 10 
idiom, style, composition, rhythm, eloquence, and what- 
ever other properties are included in it. 

Let us then put aside the scientific use of words, when 
we are to speak of language and literature. Literature 
is the personal use or exercise of language. That this is 15 
so is further proved from the fact that one author uses 
it so differently from another. Language itself in its 
very origination would seem to be traceable to individuals. 
Their peculiarities have given it its character. We are 
often able in fact to trace particular phrases or idioms to 20 
individuals; we know the history of their rise. Slang 
surely, as it is called, comes of, and breathes of the per- 
sonal. The connection between the force of words in 
particular languages and the habits and sentiments of 
the nations speaking them has often been pointed out. 25 
And, while the many use language' as they find it, the 
man of genius uses it indeed, but subjects it withal to his 
own purposes, and molds it according to his own pecu- 
liarities. The throng and succession of ideas, thoughts, 
feelings, imaginations, aspirations, which pass within 30 



254 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

him, the abstractions, the juxtapositions, the comparisons, 
the discriminations, the conceptions, which are so original 
in him, his views of external things, his judgments upon 
life, manners, and history, the exercises of his wit, of 
5 his humor, of his depth, of his sagacity, all these in- 
numerable and incessant creations, the very pulsation 
and throbbing of his intellect, does he image forth, to all 
does he give utterance, in a corresponding language, 
which is as multiform as this inward mental action itself 

10 and analogous to it, the faithful expression of his in- 
tense personality, attending on his own inward world of 
thought as its very shadow: so that we might as well 
say that one man's shadow is another's as that the style 
of a really gifted mind can belong to any but himself. 

15 It follows him about as a shadow. His thought and 
feeling are personal, and so his language is personal. 



Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. 
Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a think- 
ing out into language. This is what I have been laying 

20 down, and this is literature; not things, not the verbal 
symbols of things; not on the other hand mere words; 
but thoughts expressed in language. Call to mind. 
Gentlemen, the meaning of the Greek word which ex- 
presses this special prerogative of man over the feeble 

25 intelligence of the inferior animals. It is called Logos: 
what does Logos mean ? it stands both for rertson and for 
speech, and it is difficult to say which it means more 
properly. It means both at once: why? because really 



LITERATURE 255 

they cannot be divided, — because they are in a true 
sense one. When we can separate Hght and illumina- 
tion, life and motion, the convex and the concave of a 
curve, then will it be possible for thought to tread speech 
under foot, and to hope to do without it — then will it 5 
be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile intellect 
should renounce its own double, its instrument of ex- 
pression, and the channel of its speculations and emo- 
tions. 

Critics should consider this view of the subject before 10 
they lay down such canons of taste as the writer whose 
pages I have quoted. Such men as he is consider fine 
writing to be an addition jrom without to the matter 
treated of, — a sort of ornament superinduced, or a lux- 
ury indulged in, by those who have time and inclination 15 
for such vanities. They speak as if one man could do 
the thought, and another the style. We read in Persian 
travels of the way in which young gentlemen go to work 
in the East, when they would engage in correspondence 
with those who inspire them with hope or fear. They 20 
cannot write one sentence themselves; so they betake 
themselves to the professional letter- writer. They con- 
fide to him the object they have in view. They have a 
point to gain from a superior, a favor to ask, an evil to 
deprecate; they have to approach a man in power, or to 25 
make court to some beautiful lady. The professional 
man manufactures words for them, as they are wanted, 
as a stationer sells them paper, or a schoolmaster might 
cut their pens. Thought and word are, in their concep- 
tion, two things, and thus there is a division of labor. 30 



256 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

The man of thought comes to the man of words; and 
the man of words, duly instructed in the thought, dips 
the pen of desire into the ink of devotedness, and pro- 
ceeds to spread it over the page of desolation. Then the 
5 nightingale of affection is heard to warble to the rose of 
loveHness, while the breeze of anxiety plays around the 
brow of expectation. This is what the Easterns are said 
to consider fine writing; and it seems pretty much the 
idea of the school of critics to whom I have been re- 

10 f erring. 

We have an instance in literary history of this very 
proceeding nearer home, in a great University, in the 
latter years of the last century. I have referred to it 
before now in a public lecture elsewhere; ^ but it is too 

15 much in point here to be omitted. A learned Arabic 
scholar had to deliver a set of lectures before its doctors 
and professors on an historical subject in which his 
reading had lain. A linguist is conversant with science 
rather than with literature; but this gentleman felt that 

20 his lectures must not be without a style. Being of the 
opinion of the Orientals, with whose writings he was 
familiar, he determined to buy a style. He took the 
step of engaging a person, at a price, to turn the matter 
which he had got together into ornamental English. 

25 Observe, he did not wish for mere grammatical English, 
but for an elaborate, pretentious style. An artist was 
found in the person of a country curate, and the job was 
carried out. His lectures remain to this day, in their 
own place in the protracted series of annual Discourses 
1 Position of Catholics in Englafid, pp. 1 01, 102. 



LITERATURE 257 

to which they belong, distinguished amid a number of 
heavyish compositions by the rhetorical and ambitious 
diction for which he went into the market. This learned 
divine, indeed, and the author I have quoted, differ from 
each other in the estimate they respectively form of 5 
literary composition; but they agree together in this, — in 
considering such composition a trick and a trade; they 
put it on a par with the gold plate and the flowers and 
the music of a banquet, which do not make the viands 
better, but the entertainment more pleasurable; as if 10 
language were the hired servant, the mere mistress of the 
reason, and not the lawful wife in her own house. 

But can they really think that Homer, or Pindar, or 
Shakespeare, or Dryden, or Walter Scott, were ac- 
customed to aim at diction for its own sake, instead of 15 
being inspired with their subject, and pouring forth 
beautiful words because they had beautiful thoughts? 
this is surely too great a paradox to be borne. Rather, 
it is the fire within the author's breast which overflows 
in the torrent of his burning, irresistible eloquence; it is 20 
the poetry of his inner soul, which relieves itself in the 
Ode or the Elegy; and his mental attitude and bearing, 
the beauty of his moral countenance, the force and 
keenness of his logic, are imaged in the tenderness, or 
energy, or richness of his language. Nay, according to 25 
the well-known Hne, "facit indignatio versus;'^ not the 
words alone, but even the rhythm, the meter, the verse, 
will be the contemporaneous offspring of the emotion or 
imagination which possesses him. " Poeta nascitur, non 
fit," says the proverb; and this is in numerous instances 30 
Prose — 17 



258 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

true of his poems, as well as of himself. They are born, 
not framed; they are a strain rather than a composition; 
and their perfection is the monument, not so much of his 
skill as of his power. And this is true of prose as well as 
5 of verse in its degree: who will not recognize in the vision 
of Mirza a delicacy and beauty of style which is very 
difficult to describe, but which is felt to be in exact cor- 
respondence to the ideas of which it is the expression? 

5 
And, since the thoughts and reasonings of an author 

10 have, as I have said, a personal character, no wonder that 
his style is not only the image of his subject, but of his 
mind. That pomp of language, that full and tuneful 
diction, that felicitousness in the choice and exquisite- 
ness in the collocation of words, which to prosaic writers 

15 seem artificial, is nothing else but the mere habit and 
way of a lofty intellect. Aristotle, in his sketch of the 
magnanimous man, tells us that his voice is deep, his 
motions slow, and his stature commanding. In like 
manner, the elocution of a great intellect is great. His 

20 language expresses, not only his great thoughts, but his 
great self. Certainly he might use fewer words than he 
uses; but he fertilizes his simplest ideas, and germinates 
into a multitude of details, and prolongs the march of 
his sentences, and sweeps round to the full diapason of 

25 his harmony, as if icvdsl yaitov, rejoicing in his own vigor 
and richness of resource. I say, a narrow critic will call 
it verbiage, when really it is a sort of fullness of heart, 
parallel to that which makes the merry boy whistle as he 



LITERATURE 259 

walks, or the strong man, like the smith in the novel, 
flourish his club when there is no one to fight with. 

Shakespeare furnishes us with frequent instances of 
this peculiarity, and all so beautiful, that it is difficult to 
select for quotation. For instance, in Macbeth: — 5 

" Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, 
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 
Raze out the written troubles of the brain, 
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote. 
Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff, lo 

Which weighs upon the heart ? " 

Here a simple idea, by a process which belongs to the 
orator rather than to the poet, but still comes from the 
native vigor of genius, is expanded into a many-mem- 
bered period. 15 

The following from Hamlet is of the same kind: — 

"'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, 
Nor customary suits of solemn black, 
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, 
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, 20 

Nor the dejected haviour of the visage. 
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief, 
That can denote me truly." 

Now, if such declamation, for declamation it is, how- 
ever noble, be allowable in a poet, whose genius is so far 25 
removed from pompousness or pretense, much more is 
it allowable in an orator, whose very province it is to 
put forth words to the best advantage he can. Cicero 
has nothing more redundant in any part of his writings 



26o NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

than these passages from Shakespeare. No lover then 
at least of Shakespeare may fairly accuse Cicero of 
gorgeousness of phraseology or diffuseness of style. Nor 
will any sound critic be tempted to do so. As a certain 
5 unaffected neatness and propriety and grace of diction 
may be required of any author who lays claim to be a 
classic, for the same reason that a certain attention to 
dress is expected of every gentleman, so to Cicero may 
be allowed the privilege of the "os magna sonaturum," 

10 of which the ancient critic speaks. His copious, ma- 
jestic, musical flow of language, even if sometimes be- 
yond what the subject-matter demands, is never out of 
keeping with the occasion or with the speaker. It is 
the expression of lofty sentiments in lofty sentences, the 

15 "mens magna in corpore magno." It is the develop- 
ment of the inner man. Cicero vividly realized the 
status of a Roman senator and statesman, and the " pride 
of place" of Rome, in all the grace and grandeur which 
attached to her; and he imbibed, and became, what be 

20 admired. As the exploits of Scipio or Pompey are the 
expression of this greatness in deed, so the language of 
Cicero is the expression of it in word. And, as the acts 
of the Roman ruler or soldier represent to us, in a man- 
ner special to themselves, the characteristic magnanimity 

25 of the lords of the earth, so do the speeches or treatises 
of her accompUshed orator bring it home to our imag- 
inations as no other \witing could do. Neither Livy, 
nor Tacitus, nor Terence, nor Seneca, nor Pliny, nor 
QuintiHan, is an adequate spokesman for the Imperial 

30 City. They write Latin; Cicero writes Roman. 



LITERATURE 261 



You will say that Cicero's language is undeniably 
studied, but that Shakespeare's is as undeniably natural 
and spontaneous; and that this is what is meant, when 
the Classics are accused of being mere artists of words. 
Here we are introduced to a further large question, 5 
which gives me the opportunity of anticipating a misap- 
prehension of my meaning. I observe, then, that, not 
only is that lavish richness 0/ style, which I have noticed 
in Shakespeare, justifiable on the principles which I 
have been laying down, but, what is less easy to receive, 10 
even elaborateness in composition is no mark of trick or 
artifice in an author. Undoubtedly the works of the 
Classics, particularly the Latin, are elaborate; they have 
cost a great deal of time, care, and trouble. They have 
had many rough copies; I grant it. I grant also that 15 
there are writers of name, ancient and modern, who really 
are guilty of the absurdity of making sentences, as the 
very end of their hterary labor. Such was Isocrates; 
such were some of the sophists; they were set on words, 
to the neglect of thoughts or things; I cannot defend them. 20 
If I must give an English instance of this fault, much as 
I love and revere the personal character and intellectual 
vigor of Dr. Johnson, I cannot deny that his style often 
outruns the sense and the occasion, and is wanting in 
that simplicity which is the attribute of genius. Still, 25 
granting all this, I cannot grant, notwithstanding, that 
genius never need take pains, — that genius may not im- 
prove by practice, — that it never incurs failures, and 



262 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

succeeds the second time, — that it never finishes off 
at leisure what it has thrown off in the outHne at a 
stroke. 

Take the instance of the painter or the sculptor; he 
5 has a conception in his mind which he wishes to repre- 
sent in the medium of his art; — the Madonna and Child, 
or Innocence, or Fortitude, or some historical character 
or event. Do you mean to say he does not study his 
subject? does he not make sketches? does he not even 

10 call them ''studies"? does he not call his workroom a 
studio? is he not ever designing, rejecting, adopting, cor- 
recting, perfecting ? Are not the first attempts of Michael 
Angelo and Raffaelle extant, in the case of some of their 
most celebrated compositions? Will any one say that 

15 the Apollo Belvidere is not a conception patiently 
elaborated into its proper perfection? These depart- 
ments of taste are, according to the received notions of 
the world, the very province of genius, and yet we call 
them arts; they are the " Fine Arts." Why may not that 

20 be true of literary composition which is true of paint- 
ing, sculpture, architecture, and music? Why may not 
language be wrought as well as the clay of the modeler ? 
why may not words be worked up as well as colors? 
why should not skill in diction be simply subservient 

25 and instrumental to the great prototypal ideas which are 
the contemplation of a Plato or a Virgil? Our greatest 
poet tells us, 

" The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, 
30 And, as imagination bodies forth 



LITERATURE 263 

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

Now, is it wonderful that that pen of his should some- 
times be at fault for a while, — that it should pause, 5 
write, erase, re-write, amend, complete, before he satis- 
fies himself that his language has done justice to the 
conceptions which his mind's eye contemplated? 

In this point of view, doubtless, many or most writers 
are elaborate; and those certainly not the least whose 10 
style is furthest removed from ornament, being simple 
and natural, or vehement, or severely business-like and 
practical. Who so energetic and manly as Demos- 
thenes? Yet he is said to have transcribed Thucydides 
many times over in the formation of his style. Who so 15 
gracefully natural as Herodotus? yet his very dialect 
is not his own, but chosen for the sake of the perfection 
of his narrative. Who exhibits such happy negligence 
as our own Addison? yet artistic fastidiousness was so 
notorious in his instance that the report has got abroad, 20 
truly or not, that he was too late in his issue of an im- 
portant state paper, from his habit of revision and re- 
composition. Such great authors were working by a 
model which was before the eyes of their intellect, and 
they were laboring to say what they had to say, in such 25 
a way as would most exactly and suitably express it. 
It is not wonderful that other authors, whose style is 
not simple, should be instances of a similar literary 
diligence. Virgil wished his Mneid to be burned, elab- 
orate as is its composition, because he felt it needed 30 



264 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

more labor still, in order to make it perfect. The his- 
torian Gibbon in the last century is another instance in 
point. You must not suppose I am going to recommend 
his style for imitation, any more than his principles; 
5 but I refer to him as the example of a writer feeling the 
task which lay before him, feeling that he had to bring 
out into words for the comprehension of his readers a 
great and complicated scene, and wishing that those 
words should be adequate to his undertaking. I think 

10 he wrote the first chapter of his History three times over; 
it was not that he corrected or improved the first copy; 
but he put his first essay, and then his second, aside — 
he recast his matter, till he had hit the precise exhibition 
of it which he thought demanded by his subject. 

15 Now in all these instances, I wish you to observe, 
that what I have admitted about Uterary workmanship 
differs from the doctrine which I am opposing in this, — 
that the mere dealer in words cares little or nothing for 
the subject which he is embellishing, but can paint and 

20 gild anything whatever to order; whereas the artist, 
whom I am acknowledging, has his great or rich visions 
before him, and his only aim is to bring out what he 
thinks or what he feels in a way adequate to the thing 
spoken of, and appropriate to the speaker. 

7 

25 The illustration which I have been borrowing from 
the Fine Arts will enable me to go a step further. I 
have been showing the connection of the thought with 
the language in literary composition; and in doing so 



LITERATURE 265 

I have exposed the unphilosophical notion, that the 
language was an extra which could be dispensed with, 
and provided to order according to the demand. But I 
have not yet brought out, what immediately follows from 
this, and which was the second point which I had to 5 
show, viz., that to be capable of easy translation is no 
test of the excellence of a composition. If I must say 
what I think, I should lay down, with little hesitation, 
that the truth was almost the reverse of this doctrine. 
Nor are many words required to show it. Such a doc- 10 
trine, as is contained in the passage of the author whom 
I quoted when I began, goes upon the assumption that 
one language is just like another language, — that every 
language has all the ideas, turns of thought, delicacies 
of expression, figures, associations, abstractions, points 15 
of view, which every other language has. Now, as far 
as regards Science, it is true that all languages are pretty 
much alike for the purposes of Science; but even in this 
respect some are more suitable than others, which have 
to coin words, or to borrow them, in order to express 20 
scientific ideas. But if languages are not all equally 
adapted even to furnish symbols for those universal and 
eternal truths in which Science consists, how can they 
reasonably be expected to be all equally rich, equally 
forcible, equally musical, equally exact, equally happy 25 
in expressing the idiosyncratic peculiarities of thought 
of some original and fertile mind, who has availed him- 
self of one of them? A great author takes his native 
language, masters it, partly throws himself into it, partly 
molds and adapts it, and pours out his multitude of 30 



266 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

ideas through the variously ramified and deUcately 
minute channels of expression which he has found or 
framed: — does it follow that this his personal presence 
(as it may be called) can forthwith be transferred to 
5 every other language under the sun? Then may we 
reasonably maintain that Beethoven's piano music is 
not really beautiful, because it cannot be played on the 
hurdy-gurdy. Were not this astonishing doctrine main- 
tained by persons far superior to the writer whom I 

lo have selected for animadversion, I should find it diflSi- 
cult to be patient under a gratuitous extravagance. It 
seems that a really great author must admit of transla- 
tion, and that we have a test of his excellence when he 
reads to advantage in a foreign language as well as in 

15 his own. Then Shakespeare is a genius because he can 
be translated into German, and not a genius because 
he cannot be translated into French. Then the multi- 
plication table is the most gifted of all conceivable com- 
positions, because it loses nothing by translation, and 

20 can hardly be said to belong to any one language what- 
ever. Whereas I should rather have conceived that, in 
proportion as ideas are novel and recondite, they would 
be difficult to put into words, and that the very fact of 
their having insinuated themselves into one language 

25 would diminish the chance of that happy accident being 
repeated in another. In the language of savages you can 
hardly express any idea or act of the intellect at all: 
is the tongue of the Hottentot or Esquimaux to be made 
the measure of the genius of Plato, Pindar, Tacitus, 

30 St. Jerome, Dante, or Cervantes? 



LITERATURE 267 

Let us recur, I say, to the illustration of the Fine Arts. 
I suppose you can express ideas in painting which you 
cannot express in sculpture; and the more an artist is 
of a painter, the less he is likely to be of a sculptor. The 
more he commits his genius to the methods and con- 5 
ditions of his own art, the less he will be able to throw 
himself into the circumstances of another. Is the genius 
of Fra Angelico, of Francia, or of Raffaelle disparaged 
by the fact that he was able to do that in colors which 
no man that ever lived, which no Angel, could achieve 10 
in wood? Each of the Fine Arts has its own subject- 
matter; from the nature of the case you can do in one 
what you cannot do in another; you can do in painting 
what you cannot do in carving; you can do in oils what 
you cannot do in fresco; you can do in marble what 15 
you cannot do in ivory; you can do in wax what you 
cannot do in bronze. Then, I repeat, applying this to 
the case of languages, why should not genius be .able to 
do in Greek what it cannot do in Latin? and why are 
its Greek and Latin works defective because they will 20 
not turn into English? That genius, of which we are 
speaking, did not make English; it did not make all 
languages, present, past, and future;, it did not make 
the laws of any language: why is it to be judged of by 
that in which it had no part, over which it has no 25 
control ? 

8 

And now we are naturally brought on to our third 
point, which is on the characteristics of Holy Scripture 



268 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

as compared with profane literature. Hitherto we have 
been concerned with the doctrine of these writers, viz., 
that style is an extra, that it is a mere artifice, and that 
hence it cannot be translated; now we come to their 
5 fact, viz., that Scripture has no such artificial style, and 
that Scripture can easily be translated. Surely their 
fact is as untenable as their doctrine. 

Scripture easy of translation! then why have there 
been so few good translators? why is it that there has 

10 been such great difficulty in combining the two necessary 
quaHties, fidelity to the original and purity in the adopted 
vernacular ? why is it that the authorized versions of the 
Church are often so inferior to the original as compo- 
sitions, except that the Church is bound above all things 

15 to see that the version is doctrinally correct, and in a 
difficult problem is obliged to put up with defects in 
what is of secondary importance, provided she secure 
what is of first ? If it were so easy to transfer the beauty 
of the original to the copy, she would not have been 

20 content with her received version in various languages 
which could be named. 

And then in the next place. Scripture not elaborate! 
Scripture not ornamented in diction, and musical in 
cadence! Why, consider the Epistle to the Hebrews — 

25 where is there in the classics any composition more care- 
fully, more artificially written? Consider the book of 
Job — is it not a sacred drama, as artistic, as perfect, as 
any Greek tragedy of Sophocles or Euripides? Con- 
sider the Psalter — are there no ornaments, no rhythm, no 

30 studied cadences, no responsive members, in that di- 



LITERATURE 269 

vinely beautiful book ? And is it not hard to understand? ' 
are not the Prophets hard to understand? is not St. Paul 
hard to understand? Who can say that these are pop- 
ular compositions? who can say that they are level at 
first reading with the understandings of the multitude? 5 

That there are portions indeed of the inspired volume 
more simple both in style and in meaning, and that 
these are the more sacred and sublime passages, as, for 
instance, parts of the Gospels, I grant at once; but this 
does not militate against the doctrine I have been lay- 10 
ing down. Recollect, Gentlemen, my distinction when 
I began. I have said Literature is one thing, and that 
Science is another; that Literature has to do with ideas, 
and Science with reahties; that Literature is of a personal 
character, that Science treats of what is universal and 15 
eternal. In proportion, then, as Scripture excludes the 
personal coloring of its writers, and rises into the region 
of pure and mere inspiration, when it ceases in any 
sense to be the writing of man, of St. Paul or St. John, 
of Moses or Isaias, then it comes to belong to Science, 20 
not Literature. Then it conveys the things of heaven, 
unseen verities, divine manifestations, and them alone — 
not the ideas, the feelings, the aspirations, of its human 
instruments, who, for all that they were inspired and 
infallible, did not cease to be men. St. Paul's epistles, 25 
then, I consider to be literature in a real and true sense, 
as personal, as rich in reflection and emotion, as De- 
mosthenes or Euripides; and, without ceasing to be 
revelations of objective truth, they are expressions of 
the subjective notwithstanding. On the other hand, 30 



270 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE • 

portions of the Gospels, of the book of Genesis, and 
other passages of the Sacred Volume, are of the nature 
of Science. Such is the beginning of St. John's Gospel, 
which we read at the end of Mass, Such is the Creed. 
5 I mean, passages such as these are the mere enunciation 
of eternal things, without (so to say) the medium of any 
human mind transmitting them to us. The words used 
have the grandeur, the majesty, the calm, unimpassioned 
beauty of Science; they are in no sense Literature, they 

10 are in no sense personal; and therefore they are easy to 
apprehend, and easy to translate. 

Did time admit I could show you parallel instances of 
what I am speaking of in the Classics, inferior to the 
inspired word in proportion as the subject-matter of the 

15 classical authors is immensely inferior to the subjects 
treated of in Scripture — but parallel, inasmuch as the 
classical author or speaker ceases for the moment to 
have to do with Literature, as speaking of things ob- 
jectively, and rises to the serene sublimity of Science. 

20 But I should be carried too far if I began. 

9 
I shall then merely sum up what I have said, and 
come to a conclusion. Reverting, then, to my original 
question, what is the meaning of Letters, as contained, 
Gentlemen, in the designation of your Faculty, I have 
25 answered, that by Letters or Literature is meant the 
expression of thought in language, where by "thought" 
I mean the ideas, feelings, views, reasonings, and other 
operations of the human mind. And the Art of Letters 



LITERATURE 271 

is the method by which a speaker or writer brings out 
in words, worthy of his subject, and sufficient for his 
audience or readers, the thoughts which impress him. 
Literature, then, is of a personal character; it consists in 
the enunciations and teachings of those who have a right 5 
to speak as representatives of their kind, and in whose 
words their brethren find an interpretation of their own 
sentiments, a record of their own experience, and a 
suggestion for their own judgments. A great author. 
Gentlemen, is not one who merely has a copia verborum, 10 
whether in prose or verse, and can, as it were, turn on at 
his will any number of splendid phrases and swelling 
sentences; but he is one who has something to say and 
knows how to say it. I do not claim for him, as such, 
any great depth of thought, or breadth of view, or philos- 15 
ophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of human nature, or 
experience of human life, though these additional gifts 
he may have, and the more he has of them the greater 
he is; but I ascribe to him, as his characteristic gift, in 
a large sense the faculty of Expression. He is master of 20 
the two-fold Logos, the thought and the word, distinct, 
but inseparable from each other. He may, if so be, 
elaborate his compositions, or he may pour out his im- 
provisations, but in either case he has but one aim, 
which he keeps steadily before him, and is conscientious 25 
and single-minded in fulfilling. That aim is to give forth 
what he has within him; and from his very earnestness 
it comes to pass that, whatever be the splendor of his 
diction or the harmony of his periods, he has with him 
the charm of an incommunicable simplicity. Whatever 30 



272 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

be his subject, high or low, he treats it suitably and for 
its own sake. If he is a poet, " nil moHtur inepte.'' If he 
is an orator, then too he speaks, not only "distincte" 
and "splendide," but also ^'apte.'^ His page is the lucid 
5 mirror of his mind and life — 

'* Quo fit, ut omnis 
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella 
Vita senis." 

He writes passionately, because he feels keenly; for- 

10 cibly, because he conceives vividly; he sees too clearly 
to be vague; he is too serious to be otiose; he can analyze 
his subject, and therefore he is rich; he embraces it as 
a whole and in its parts, and therefore he is consistent; 
he has a firm hold of it, and therefore he is luminous. 

15 When his imagination wells up, it overflows in orna- 
ment; when his heart is touched, it thrills along his 
verse. He always has the right word for the right idea, 
and never a word too much. If he is brief, it is because 
few words suffice; when he is lavish of them, still each 

20 word has its mark, and aids, not embarrasses, the 
vigorous march of his elocution. He expresses what all 
feel, but all cannot say; and his sayings pass into prov- 
erbs among his people, and his phrases become house- 
hold words and idioms of their daily speech, which is 

25 tesselated with the rich fragments of his language, as 

we see in foreign lands the marbles of Roman grandeur 

worked into the walls and pavements of modern palaces. 

Such preeminently is Shakespeare among ourselves; 

such preeminently Virgil among the Latins; such in 

30 their degree are all those writers who in every nation 



LITERATURE 273 

go by the name of Classics. To particular nations they 
are necessarily attached from the circumstance of the 
variety of tongues, and the peculiarities of each; but so 
far they have a catholic and ecumenical character, that 
what they express is common to the whole race of man, 5 
and they alone are able to express it. 

10 

If then the power of speech is a gift as great as any 
that can be named, — if the origin of language is by 
many philosophers even considered to be nothing short 
of divine, — if by means of words the secrets of the heart 10 
are brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hidden 
grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, counsel imparted, 
experience recorded, and wisdom perpetuated, — if by 
great authors the many are drawn up into unity, na- 
tional character is fixed, a people speaks, the past and 15 
the future, the East and the West are brought into com- 
munication with each other, — if such men are, in a word, 
the spokesmen and prophets of the human family, — it 
will not answer to make light of Literature or to neglect 
its study; rather we may be sure that, in proportion as 20 
we master it in whatever language, and imbibe its spirit, 
we shall ourselves become in our own measure the 
ministers of like benefits to others, be they many or few, 
be they in the obscurer or the more distinguished walks 
of life, — who are united to us by social ties, and are 25 
within the sphere of our personal influence. 

Prose — 18 



WALTER BAGEHOT 

[Walter Bagehot was born at Langport, Somersetshire, England, 
in 1826. He was educated at Bristol and later at University Col- 
lege, London, where he took his M. A. in 1848. He then began 
the study of law, and in 1852 was admitted to the bar. He did 
not practice, however, but, instead, he entered into business with 
his father who was a banker and shipowner at Langport. He 
soon became a writer for periodicals, and was associated with 
R. H. Hutton on the National Review, to which he contributed 
most of his critical essays. In i860, through the death of his 
father-in-law, Bagehot became editor of a weekly newspaper called 
The Eco7iomist. Among his writings are The English Constitu- 
tion (1867), Physics and Politics (1872), perhaps his greatest and 
certainly his best-known work, and Lombard Street, a book on the 
money market. Two years after Bagehot's death, which occurred 
in 1877, there was published a collection of his studies, biograph- 
ical, economic, and literary, edited by his friend R. H. Hutton.] 

It is not without significance that some of the most 
acute and stimulating essays in criticism written in 
England during the nineteenth century came from the 
pen of a man who w^as not only a critic of literature, 
but also an able banker, a skilled political economist, 
and a most keen interpreter of the English constitution. 
Walter Bagehot brought to the criticism of men and 
books a masculine nature, a sense of humor, a catholic 
taste, a freshness of view, and, in a word, that delight- 
ful sanity which is perhaps the distinguishing char- 
acteristic of a man of the world of the high type. He 
liked books that suggested the "talk of the manifold 
talker, glancing lightly from topic to topic, suggesting 
274 



WALTER BAGEHOT 275 

deep things in a jest, unfolding unanswerable arguments 
in an absurd illustration." He did not care for Ma- 
caulay because Macaulay, he thought, was a book- 
made man, a "prey to print;" but he never tired of 
praising Walter Scott, whose novels revealed to him a 
hearty nature, a healthy mind. We may be sure that 
he was proud to count himself among Englishmen, of 
whom he said, "We excel in strong, noble imagination, 
in solid stuff." 

To this robust, practical EngHsh character, there 
was added a quick, penetrating intelligence, which 
makes us think of Bagehot as a man with both French 
and German blood in his veins. The irony in his humor, 
his aptness and fertility in illustration, together with 
his scorn of dullness, suggest the Gallic mind; while 
his zest in speculation and above all his innate sense of 
a spiritual world behind our material one, prompt us 
to beUeve that Bagehot, Uke many Germans, was born 
for metaphysical inquiry. He evidently delights to 
catch a glimpse of the inmost w^orkings of man's higher 
faculties and he seems ever in wait, as he reads his 
author, for the deeper, if shadowy, meanings, for the 
chance intimations of a presence that disturbs him with 
the joy of elevated thoughts. Wordsworth is, in fact, his 
favorite poet, whom he quotes as he takes leave of the 
gay, worldly muse of Beranger, or as he turns with re- 
lief from the hard Whiggism of Jeffrey, and whose 
works he does not hesitate to call "the Scriptures of 
the intellectual life." 

Bagehot's literary criticism shows both the excellen- 
cies and the defects of this practical, this speculative 
mind. We have in his essays the searching, independ- 
ent, stimulating opinions of an active intelligence. We 
have, as it were, the bracing air of outdoors blown into 
our library and across our page. We have the man who 
knows politics and business as few know them, analyzing 



276 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

for us the prose of Gibbon, of Macaulay and of Jeffrey, 
and the poetry of Milton and Shakespeare, of Shelley 
and Tennyson. The impression of such a man must 
ever be quickening, provided always he displays, as 
Bagehot indeed does, a mind broad and cultivated, 
subtle and penetrating. But Bagehot had not his spec- 
ulative tendencies well in command. In his haste to 
discover the "type," in his desire to classify his ma- 
terial, he deals too largely in theory to suit the liberal 
reader. As soon as he studies a character or a book, 
he wishes to label it, apparently, to fence it about with 
arbitrary, and often cramping, limitations. To be sure, 
in so competent an essayist as Bagehot, this method 
leaves us generally with broad, common sense classifi- 
cations. It is of advantage, for example, to know that 
Shelley's was an "impulsive," and Milton's an "ascetic, 
character," that Dickens' genius was "irregular," that 
Hartley Coleridge was a " self-deKneative " poet, that 
novels are "ubiquitous" or "sentimental," and that 
biographers are either "exhaustive" or "selective," 
and so on. But this method is after all not the method 
of the greatest criticism, because it has no basis in con- 
sistent and profound principles. We do not feel that 
the judgments of Bagehot have their roots in a har- 
monious philosophy of life, as have those of Carlyle, 
or that they are founded upon a definite doctrine of 
criticism, as are those of Arnold and of Pater. Each 
essay is an independent entity, immensely stimulating to 
the thoughtful reader, and each is a brilliant specimen 
of "popular criticism," to use a phrase that Bagehot 
himself apphed to one of them. Yet they nowhere show 
that the critic appreciated literature in terms of a deliber- 
ately reasoned, comprehensive criterion. 

The essay on Pure, Ornate and Grotesque Art is ad- 
mirably representative of Bagehot's criticism both in 
method and in style. We here observe the large-minded 



WALTER BAGEHOt 277 

man of affairs judging the poetry of the masters accord- 
ing to certain "simple principles of art." He puts 
literature to the test of life. He brings his subject into 
the light of an intellect most practical and most specu- 
lative, at once shrewd, quick-glancing, and acute. The 
serious student is startled into attention. He is aroused 
by a trenchant and systematic discussion of poetry, 
until at last he probably wishes to challenge the bold 
theories advanced by the critic. To awaken this spirit 
is possibly the highest service Hterary criticism can ren- 
der, the richest pleasure it can communicate. But 
Bagehot's method, upon a second and deeper examina- 
tion, is perhaps seen to suffer from the defects of its 
qualities. Although the classification of art into pure, 
ornate, and grotesque is most suggestive, and though 
it by no means implies that all of Wordsworth's poetry 
belongs to the first kind, all of Tennyson's to the second, 
or all of Browning's to the third, yet it is a classification 
at bottom arbitrary and without scientific exactness. The 
material in the essay would have to be subjected to the 
test of a higher standard of criticism, if it were to re- 
ceive an appreciation that would carry with it any 
degree of finality. 

Bagehot's ideal of composition is expressed in his 
remark that "the knack in style is to write like a human 
being." Like the style of Sydney Smith, which Bage- 
hot praised, "it goes straight to its object: it is not re- 
strained by the gentle hindrances, the delicate decorums 
of refining natures." We cannot think of Bagehot de- 
liberating upon the refinements of expression as did 
Newman and Pater, those masters in the art of higher 
rhetoric. He has, however, a luminous and telling man- 
ner of composition, often most felicitous, as when he 
says that "a man who has not read Homer is like a 
man who has not seen the ocean." He recognized a 
"certain clumsiness" in all the Germanic languages. 



278 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

and his own style not infrequently reminds one of 
the clearness, the flexibility, of French prose. An in- 
stance of his wit is the cool comment that ''among the 
disciples of Carlyle it is considered that having been 
born a Puritan is the next best thing to having been in 
Germany;" and also his assertion that "it is easy for 
a doctrinaire to bear a post-mortem examination, — it 
is much the same whether he be aUve or dead." Though 
the present essay lacks this two-edged wit, and, in truth, 
is almost without the light of Bagehot's^ humor, it is in 
all other particulars typical of his style. In grasp, as well 
as in penetration of thought, in free play of phrase, it is 
surpassed by no other of his literary studies. In evenness 
and firmness of manner it is better than most. 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, AND BROWNING; OR, PURE, 
ORNATE, AND GROTESQUE ART IN ENGLISH POETRY 

We couple these two books ^ together, net because of 
their likeness, for they are as dissimilar as books can be; 
nor on account of the eminence of their authors, for in 
general two great authors are too much for one essay; 
5 but because they are the best possible illustration of 
sornething we have to say upon poetical art — because 
they may give to it life and freshness. The accident of 
contemporaneous publication has here brought together 
two books very characteristic of modern art, and we want 
[o to show how they are characteristic. 

Neither English poetry nor English criticism have 
ever recovered the eruption which they both made at 
the beginning of this century into the fashionable world. 

1 Tennyson's Enoch Ardai and Browning's Dramatis Personce. 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 279 

The poems of Lord Byron were received with an avidity 
that resembles our present avidity for sensation novels, 
and were read by a class which at present reads little 
but such novels. Old men who remember those days 
may be heard to say: "We hear nothing of poetry now- 5 
adays; it seems quite down." And "down " it certainly 
is, if for poetry it be a descent to be no longer the 
favorite excitement of the more frivolous part of the 
"upper" world. That stimulating poetry is now little 
read. A stray schoolboy may still be detected in a 10 
wild admiration for the Giaour or the Corsair (and it 
is suitable to his age, and he should not be re- 
proached for it), but the real posterity — the quiet stu- 
dents of a past literature — never read them or think of 
them. A line or two Hnger on the memory; a few tell- 15 
ing strokes of occasional and felicitous energy are quoted, 
but this is all. As wholes, these exaggerated stories 
were worthless; they taught nothing, and therefore they 
are forgotten. If nowadays a dismal poet were, like 
Byron, to lament the fact of his birth, and to hint he 20 
was too good for the world, the Saturday Reviewers 
would say that "they doubted if he was too good; that 
a sulky poet was a questionable addition to a tolerable 
world; that he need not have been born, as far as they 
were concerned." Doubtless, there is much in Byron 25 
besides his dismal exaggeration, but it was that exag- 
geration which made "the sensation" which gave him 
a wild moment of dangerous fame. As so often happens, 
the cause of his momentary fashion is the cause also of 
his lasting oblivion. Moore's former reputation was' 30 



28o NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

less excessive, yet it has not been more permanent. 
The prettiness of a few songs preserves the memory of 
his name, but as a poet to read he is forgotten. There is 
nothing to read in him; no exquisite thought, no subKme 
5 feehng, no consummate description of true character. 
Almost the sole result of the poetry of that time is the 
harm which it has done. It degraded for a time the 
whole character of the art. It said by practice, by a 
most efficient and successful practice, that it was the 

lo aim, the duty of poets, to catch the attention of the pass- 
ing, the fashionable, the busy world. If a poem "fell 
dead," it was nothing; it was composed to please the 
" London" of the year, and if that London did not like it, 
why, it had failed. It fixed upon the minds of a whole 

15 generation, it engraved in popular memory and tradi- 
tion, a vague conviction that poetry is but one of the 
many amusements for the enjoying classes, for the lighter 
hours of all classes. The mere notion, the bare idea, 
that poetry is a deep thing, a teaching thing, the most 

20 surely and wisely elevating of human things, is even 
now to the coarse public mind nearly unknown. 

As was the fate of poetry, so inevitably was that of 
criticism. The science that expounds which poetry is 
good and which is bad, is dependent for its popular rep- 

25 utation on the popular estimate of poetry itself. The 
critics of that day had a day, which is more than can be 
said for some since: they professed to tell the fashion- 
able world in what books it would find new pleasure, 
and therefore they were read by the fashionable world. 

30 Byron counted the critic and poet equal. The Ediu: 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 281 

hurgh Review penetrated among the young, and into 
places of female resort where it does not go now. As 
people ask, "Have you read Henry Dunbar? and what 
do you think of it?" so they then asked, "Have you read 
the Giaour and what do you think of it?" Lord 5 
Jeffrey, a shrewd judge of the world, employed himself 
in teUing it what to think; not so much what it ought to 
think, as what at bottom it did think, and so by dexter- 
ous sympathy with current society he gained contem- 
porary fame and power. Such fame no critic must 10 
hope for now. His articles will not penetrate where 
the poems themselves do not penetrate. When poetry 
was noisy, criticism was loud; now poetry is a still small 
voice, and criticism must be smaller and stiller. As 
the function of such criticism was limited, so was its 15 
subject. For the great and (as time now proves) the 
permanent part of the poetry of his time — for Shelley 
and for Wordsworth — Lord Jeffrey had but one word. 
He said, "It won't do." And it will not do to amuse a 
drawing-room. 20 

The doctrine that poetry is a light amusement for idle 
hours, a metrical species of sensational novel, did not 
indeed become popular without gainsayers. Thirty 
years ago, Mr. Carlyle most rudely contradicted it. 
But perhaps this is about all that he has done. He 25 
has denied, but he has not disproved. He has contra- 
dicted the floating paganism, but he has not founded 
the deep religion. All about and around us a jaith 
in poetry struggles to be extricated, but it is not extri- 
cated. Some day, at the touch of the true word, the 30 



282 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

whole confusion will by magic cease; the broken and 
shapeless notions will cohere and crystalHze into a bright 
and true theory. But this cannot be yet. 

But though no complete theory of the poetic art as 
5 yet be possible for us, though perhaps only our children's 
children will be able to speak on this subject with the 
assured confidence which belongs to accepted truth, 
yet something of some certainty may be stated on the 
easier elements, and something that will throw light on 

10 these two new books. But it will be necessary to as- 
sign reasons, and the assigning of reasons is a dry task. 
Years ago, when criticism only tried to show how poetry 
could be made a good amusement, it was not impossible 
that criticism itself should be amusing. But now it 

15 must at least be serious, for we beheve that poetry is a 
serious and a deep thing. 

There should be a word in the language of literary art 
to express what the word "picturesque" expresses for 
the fine arts. Picturesque means fit to be put into a 

20 picture; we want a word liter atesque, "fit to be put into 
a book." An artist goes through a hundred different 
country scenes, rich with beauties, charms and merits, 
but he does not paint any of them. He leaves them alone; 
he idles on till he finds the hundred-and-first — a scene 

25 which many observers would not think much of, but 
which he knows by virtue of his art will look well on 
canvas, and this he paints and preserves. Susceptible 
observers, though not artists, feel this quality too; they 
say of a scene, "How picturesque!" meaning by this 

30 a quality distinct from that of beauty, or sublimity. 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 283 

or grandeur — meaning to speak not only of the scene 
as it is in itself, but also of its fitness for imitation by 
art; meaning not only that it is good, but that its goodness 
is such as ought to be transferred to paper; meaning not 
simply that it fascinates, but also that its fascination is 5 
such as ought to be copied by man. A fine and insen- 
sible instinct has put language to this subtle use; it 
expresses an idea without which fine art criticism could 
not go on, and it is very natural that the language of 
pictorial art should be better supplied with words than 10 
that of Hterary criticism, for the eye was used before the 
mind, and language embodies primitive sensuous ideas, 
long ere it expresses, or need express, abstract and lit- 
erary ones. 

The reason why a landscape is "picturesque" is often 15 
said to be, that such landscape represents an "idea." 
But this explanation, though, in the minds of some who 
use it, it is near akin to the truth, fails to explain that truth 
to those who did not know it before; the word "idea" 
is so often used in these subjects when people do not 20 
know anything else to say; it represents so often a kind 
of intellectual insolvency, when philosophers are at 
their wits' end, that shrewd people will never readily on 
any occasion give it credit for meaning anything. A 
wise explainer must, therefore, look out for other words 25 
to convey what he has to say. Landscapes, like every- 
thing else in nature, divide themselves as we look at 
them into a sort of rude classification. We go down a 
river, for example, and we see a hundred landscapes on 
both sides of it, resembling one another in much, yet 30 



284 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

differing in something; with trees here, and a farm- 
house there, and shadows on one side, and a deep pool 
far on, a collection of circumstances most familiar in 
themselves, but making a perpetual novelty by the 
5 magic of their various combinations. We travel so for 
miles and hours, and then we come to a scene which 
also has these various circumstances and adjuncts, 
but which combines them best, which makes the best 
whole of them, which shows them in their best propor- 

10 tion at a single glance before the eye. Then we say: 
"This is the place to paint the river; this is the pictur- 
esque point!" Or, if not artists or critics of art, we feel 
without analysis or examination that somehow this bend 
or sweep of the river shall in future be the river to us: 

15 that it is the image of it which we will retain in our minds' 
eye, by which we will remember it, which we will call up 
when we want to describe or think of it. Some fine 
countries, some beautiful rivers, have not this pictur- 
esque quality: they give us elements of beauty, but they 

20 do not combine them together; we go on for a time de- 
lighted, but after a time somehow we get wearied; we 
feel that we are taking in nothing and learning nothing; 
we get no collected image before our mind; we see the 
accidents and circumstances of that sort of scenery, 

25 but the summary scene we do not see; we find disjecta 
membra, but no form; various and many and faulty 
approximations are displayed in succession; but the 
absolute perfection in that country's or river's scenery — 
its type — is withheld. We go away from such places in 

30 part delighted, but in part baffled; we have been puzzled 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 285 

by pretty things; we have beheld a hundred different 
inconsistent specimens of the same sort of beauty; but 
the rememberable idea, the full development, the char- 
acteristic individuality of it, we have not seen. 

We find the same sort of quality in all parts of painting. 5 
W'C see a portrait of a person we know, and we say, 
"It is Hke — yes, like, of course, but it is not the man;'^ 
we feel it could not be any one else, but still, somehow 
it fails to bring home to us the individual as we know 
him to be. He is not there. An accumulation of fea- 10 
tures like his are painted, but his essence is not painted; 
an approximation more or less excellent is given, but the 
characteristic expression, the typical form, of the man 
is withheld. 

Literature — the painting of words — has the same 15 
quaHty, but wants the analogous word. The word 
^^ literatesque " would mean, if we possessed it, that per- 
fect combination in subject-matter of Hterature, which 
suits the art of literature. We often meet people, and 
say of them, sometimes meaning well and sometimes 20 
ill: "How well so-and-so would do in a book!" Such 
people are by no means the best people; but they are 
the most effective people — the most rememberable 
people. Frequently, when we first know them, we 
like them because they explain to us so much of 25 
our experience; we have known many people "like 
that," in one way or another, but we did not seem to 
understand them; they were nothing to us, for their 
traits were indistinct; we forgot them, for they hitched 
on to nothing, and we could not classify them. But 30 



286 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

when we see the type of the genus, at once we seem to 
comprehend its character; the inferior specimens are ex- 
plained by the perfect embodiment; the approxima- 
tions are definable when we know the ideal to which 
5 they draw near. There are an infinite number of classes 
of human beings, but in each of these classes there 
is a distinctive type which, if we could expand it in 
words, would define the class. We cannot expand it 
in formal terms any more than a landscape, or a species 

10 of landscape; but we have an art, an art of words, 
which can draw it. Travelers and others often bring 
home, in addition to their long journals — which, though 
so Uving to them, are so dead, so inanimate, so unde- 
scriptive to all else — a pen-and-ink sketch, rudely done 

15 very likely, but which, perhaps, even the more for the 
blots and strokes, gives a distinct notion, an emphatic 
image, to all who see it. We say at once, now we know 
the sort of thing. The sketch has hit the mind. True 
literature does the same. It describes sorts, varieties, 

20 and permutations, by delineating the type of each sort, 
the ideal of each variety, the central, the marking trait 
of each permutation. 

On this account, the greatest artists of the world have 
ever shown an enthusiasm for reality. To care for notions 

25 and abstractions; to philosophize; to reason out conclu- 
sions; to care for schfemes of thought, are signs in the 
artistic mind of secondary excellence. A Schiller, a 
Euripides, a Ben Johnson, cares for ideas — for the par- 
ings of the intellect, and the distillation of the mind; 

30 a Shakespeare, a Homer, a Goethe, finds his mental 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 287 

occupation, the true home of his natural thoughts, in 
the real world — "which is the world of all of us" — 
where the face of Nature, the moving masses of men and 
women, are ever changing, ever multiplying, ever mixing 
one with the other. The reason is plain — the business 5 
of the poet, of the artist, is with types; and those types are 
mirrored in reahty. As a painter must not only have a 
hand to execute, but an eye to distinguish^ — as he must 
go here and there through the real world to catch the 
picturesque man, the picturesque scene, which is to live 10 
on his canvas — so the poet must find in that reahty, the 
literatesqiie man, the literatesqite scene, which nature 
intends for him, and which will live in his page. Even 
in reality he will not find this type complete, or the 
characteristics perfect; but there he will find, at least, 15 
something, some hint, some intimation, some suggestion; 
whereas, in the stagnant home of his own thoughts he 
will find nothing pure, nothing as it is, nothing which 
does not bear his own mark, which is not somehow 
altered by a mixture with himself. 20 

The first conversation of Goethe and Schiller illus- 
trates this conception of the poet's art. Goethe was at 
that time prejudiced against Schiller, we must re- 
member, partly from what he considered the outrages 
of the Robbers, partly because of the philosophy of 25 
Kant. Schiller's Essay on Grace and Dignity, he tells 
us — 

** Was yet less of a kind to reconcile me. The philosophy of 
Kant, which exalts the dignity of mind so highly, while appearing 
to restrict it, Schiller had joyfully embraced: it unfolded the ex- 30 



288 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

traordinary qualities which Nature had implanted in him; and in 
the Uvely feeling of freedom and self-direction, he showed himself 
unthankful to the Great Mother, who surely had not acted like a 
step-dame towards him. Instead of viewing her as self -subsisting, 
5 as producing with a living force, and according to appointed laws, 
alike the highest and the lowest of her works, he took her up un- 
der the aspect of some empirical native qualities of the human 
mind. Certain harsh passages I could even directly apply to my- 
self : they exhibited my confession of faith in a false light ; and I 
ID felt that if written without particular attention to me, they were 
still worse ; for, in that case, the vast chasm which lay between us 
gaped but so much the more distinctly." 

After a casual meeting at a Society for Natural His- 
tory, they walked home, and Goethe proceeds: — 

15 "We reached his house; the talk induced me to go in. I then 
expounded to him, with as much vivacity as possible, the Meta- 
morphosis of Plants^ drawing out on paper, with many characteris- 
tic strokes, a symbolic plant for him, as I proceeded. He heard 
and saw all this, wnth much interest and distinct comprehension ; 

20 but when I had done, he shook his head and said: 'This is no 
experiment, this is an idea.' I stopped with some degree of irri- 
tation ; for the point which separated us was most luminously 
marked by this expression. The opinions in Dignity and Grace 
again occurred to me ; the old grudge was just awakening ; but I 

25 smothered it, and merely said : ' I was happy to find that I had 
got ideas without knowing it, nay, that I saw them before my 
eyes.' 

" Schiller had much more prudence and dexterity of manage- 
ment than I ; he was also thinking of his periodical the Horen, 

30 about this time, and of course rather wished to attract than repel 
me. Accordingly, he answered me like an accomplished Kantite ; 
and as my stiff-necked Realism gave occasion to many contradic- 
tions, much battling took place between us, and at last a truce, in 
which neither party would consent to yield the victory, but each 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 289 

held himself invincible. Positions like the following grieved me 
to the very soul : How can there ever be an experiment, that shall 
correspond with an idea ? The specific quality of an idea is, that no 
experiment can reach it or agree with it. Yet if he held as an idea, 
the same thing which I looked upon as an experiment, there must 5 
certainly, I thought, be some community between us — some ground 
whereon both of us might meet 1 " 

With Goethe's natural history, or with Kant's philos- 
ophy, we have here no concern; but we can combine the 
expressions of the two great poets into a nearly complete 10 
description of poetry. The "symbolic plant" is the 
type of which we speak, the ideal at which inferior 
specimens aim, the class characteristic which they all 
share, but which none shows forth fully. Goethe was 
right in searching for this in reaUty and nature; Schiller 15 
was right in saying that it was an "idea," a transcend- 
ing notion to which approximations could be found in 
experience, but only approximations — which could not 
be found there itself. Goethe, as a poet, rightly felt the 
primary necessity of outward suggestion and experience; 20 
Schiller, as a philosopher, rightly felt its imperfection. 

But in these delicate matters, it is easy to misappre- 
hend. There is, undoubtedly, a sort of poetry which is 
produced as it were out of the author's mind. The de- 
scription of the poet's own moods and feelings is a com- 25 
mon sort of poetry — perhaps the commonest sort. But 
the peculiarity of such cases is, that the poet does not de- 
scribe himself as himself: autobiography is not his object; 
he takes himself as a specimen of human nature; he de- 
scribes, not himself, but a distillation of himself: he 30 
Prose — 19 



290 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

takes such of his moods as are most characteristic, as 
most typify certain moods of certain men, or certain 
moods of all men; he chooses preponderant feehngs of 
special sorts of men, or occasional feelings of men of all 
5 sorts; but with whatever other difference and diversity, 
the essence is that such self-describing poets describe 
what is in them, but not peculiar to them, — what is 
generic, not what is special and individual. Gray's 
Elegy describes a mood which Gray felt more than other 

30 men, but which most others, perhaps all others, feel too. 
It is more popular, perhaps, than any English poem, 
because that sort of feeling is the most diffused of high 
feelings, and because Gray added to a singular nicety 
of fancy a habitual proneness to a contemplative — a dis- 

15 cerning but unbiassed — meditation on death and on life. 
Other poets cannot hope for such success: a subject so 
popular, so grave, so wise, and yet so suitable to the 
writer's nature, is hardly to be found. But the same 
ideal, the same unautobiographical character is to be 

20 found in the wTitings of meaner men. Take sonnets of 
Hartley Coleridge, for example: — 



TO A FRIEND 

" When we were idlers with the loitering rills, 
The need of human love we little noted : 
25 Our love was Nature ; and the peace that floated 

On the white mist, and dwelt upon the hills, 
To sweet accord subdued our wayward vnWs : 
One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted, 
That, wisely doating, ask'd not why it doated, 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 29 1 

And ours the unknown joy, which knowing kills. 

But now I find, how dear thou wert to me ; 

That man is more than half of Nature's treasure, 

Of that fair Beauty which no eye can see, 

Of that sweet music which no ear can measure ; 5 

And now the streams may sing for others' pleasure, 

The hills sleep on in their eternity." 

II 

TO THE SAME 

' In the great city we are met again, 

Where many souls there are that breathe and die, lo 

Scarce knowing more of Nature's potency, 
Than what they learned from heat, or cold, or rain, 
The sad vicissitude of weary pain ; — 
For busy man is lord of ear and eye, 

And what hath Nature, but the vast void sky, 15 

And the thronged river toiling to the main ? 
Oh ! say not so, for she shall have her part 
In every smile, in every tear that falls, 
And she shall hide her in the secret heart. 

Where love persuades, and sterner duty calls : 20 

But worse it were than death, or sorrow's smart, 
To Uve without a friend within these walls." 

Ill 

TO THE SAME 

' We parted on the mountains, as two streams 
From one clear spring pursue their several ways ; 25 

And thy fleet course hath been through many a maze 
In foreign lands, where silvery Padus gleams 
To that delicious sky, whose glowing beams 
Brightened the tresses that old Poets praise; 
Where Petrarch's patient love and artful lays, 30 



292 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

And Ariosto's song of many themes, 
Moved the soft air. But I, a lazy brook, 
As close pent up within my native dell, 
Have crept along from nook to shady nook, 
5 Where flow'rets blow, and whispering Naiads dwell. 

Yet now we meet, that parted were so wide, 
O'er rough and smooth to travel side by side." 

The contrast of instructive and enviable locomotion 
with refining but instructive meditation is not special and 

10 peculiar to these two, but general and universal. It was 
set down by Hartley Coleridge because he was the most 
meditative and refining of men. 

What sort of literatesque types are fit to be described 
in the sort of Kterature called poetry, is a matter on which 

15 much might be written. Mr. Arnold, some years since, 
put forth a theory that the art of poetry could only deline- 
ate great actions. But though, rightly interpreted and 
understood — using the word action so as to include high 
and sound activity in contemplation — this definition may 

20 suit the highest poetry, it certainly cannot be stretched to 
include many inferior sorts and even many good sorts. 
Nobody in their senses would - describe Gray's Elegy 
as the delineation of a "great action"; some kinds of 
mental contemplation may be energetic enough to de- 

25 serve this name, but Gray would have been frightened at 
the very word. He loved scholarlike calm and quiet in- 
action; his very greatness depended on his not acting, on 
his " wise passiveness," on his indulging the grave idle- 
ness which so well appreciates so much of human Hfe. 

30 [Bagehot here quotes from Arnold's £mJ>edoc/es.] 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 293 

We are disposed to believe that no very sharp defini- 
tion can be given — at least in the present state of the 
critical art — of the boundary line between poetry and 
other sorts of imaginative delineation. Between the 
undoubted dominions of the two kinds there is a de- 5 
ba table land; everybody is agreed that the CEdipus 
at Coloniis is poetry: every one is agreed that the won- 
derful appearance of Mrs. Veal is not poetry. But the 
exact line which separates grave novels in verse, like 
Aylmer's Field or Enoch Arden, from grave novels not 10 
in verse, like Silas Marner or Adam Bede, we own 
we cannot draw with any confidence. Nor, perhaps, 
is it very important; whether a narrative is thrown 
into verse or not certainly depends in part on the taste 
of the age, and in part on its mechanical helps. Verse 15 
is the only mechanical help to the memory in rude 
times, and there is little writing till a cheap something 
is found to write upon, and a cheap something to write 
with. Poetry — verse, at least — is the literature of all 
work in early ages; it is only later ages which write in 20 
what they think a natural and simple prose. There 
are other casual influences in the matter too; but they 
are not material now. We need only say here that 
poetry, because it has a more marked rhythm than prose, 
must be more intense in meaning and more concise in 25 
style than prose. People expect a "marked rhythm" 
to imply something worth marking; if it fails to do so 
they are disappointed. They are displeased at the 
visible waste of a powerful instrument; they call it 
"doggerel," and rightly call it, for the metrical expres- 30 



294 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

sion of full thought and eager feeling — the burst of 
meter — incident to high imagination, should not be 
wasted on petty matters which prose does as well — 
which it does better — which it suits by its very limp- 
5 ness and weakness, whose small changes it follows more 
easily, and to whose lowest details it can fully and with- 
out effort degrade itself. Verse, too, should be more 
concise, for long-continued rhythm tends to jade the 
mind, just as brief rhythm tends to attract the atten- 

lo tion. Poetry should be memorable and emphatic, in- 
tense, and soon over. 

The great divisions of poetry, and of all other literary 
art, arise from the different modes in which these types — 
these characteristic men, these characteristic feelings — 

15 may be variously described. There are three principal 
modes which we shall attempt to describe — the pure, 
which is sometimes, but not very wisely, called the clas- 
sical; the ornate, which is also unwisely called romantic; 
and the grotesque, which might be called the mediaeval. 

20 We will describe the nature of these a little. Criticism, 
we know, must be brief — not, Uke poetry, because its 
charm is too intense to be sustained — but, on the con- 
trary, because its interest is too weak to be prolonged; 
but elementary criticism, if an evil, is a necessary evil; 

25 a little while spent among the simple principles of art 

is the first condition, the absolute prerequisite, for 

surely apprehending and wisely judging the complete 

embodiments and miscellaneous forms of actual literature. 

The definition of pure literature is, that it describes 

30 the type in its simplicity — we mean, with the exact 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 295 

amount of accessory circumstance which is necessary 
to bring it before the mind in finished perfection, and 
no more than that amount. The type needs some acces- 
sories from its nature — a picturesque landscape does 
not consist wholly of picturesque features. There is a 5 
setting of surroundings — as the Americans would say, 
of fixings — without which the reality is not itself. By 
a traditional mode of speech, as soon as we see a picture 
in which a complete effect is produced by detail so rare 
and so harmonized as to escape us, we say. How ''clas- 10 
sical"! The whole which is to be seen appears at once 
and through the detail, but the detail itself is not seen: 
we do not think of that which gives us the idea; we are 
absorbed in the idea itself. Just so in literature, the 
pure art is that which works with the fewest strokes; 15 
the fewest, that is, for its purpose, for its aim is to call 
up and bring home to men an idea, a form, a character, 
and if that idea be twisted, that form be involved, that 
character perplexed, many strokes of literary art will 
be needful. Pure art does not mutilate its object; it rep- 20 
resents it as fully as is possible with the slightest effort 
which is possible: it shrinks from no needful circum- 
stances, as little as it inserts any which are needless. 
The precise peculiarity is not merely that no incidental 
circumstance is inserted which does not tell on the 25 
main design— no art is fit to be called art which per- 
mits a stroke to be put in without an object — but that 
only the minimum of such circumstance is inserted at 
all. The form is sometimes said to be bare, the acces- 
sories are sometimes said to be invisible, because the 30 



296 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

appendages are so choice that the shape only is per- 
ceived. 

The English literature undoubtedly contains much 
impure literature — impure in its style, if not in its mean- 
5 ing — but it also contains one great, one nearly perfect, 
model of the pure style in the literary expression of 
typical sentiment; and one not perfect, but gigantic and 
close approximation to perfection in the pure delin- 
eation of objective character. Wordsworth, perhaps, 

10 comes as near to choice purity of style in sentiment as 

is possible; Milton, with exceptions and conditions to 

be explained, approaches perfection by the strenuous 

purity with which he depicts character. 

A wit once said, that " pretty women had more fea- 

15 tures than beautiful women," and though the expres- 
sion may be criticised, the meaning is correct. Pretty 
women seem to have a great number of attractive points, 
each of which attracts your attention, and each one of 
which you remember afterwards; yet these points have 

20 not grown together, their features have not linked 
themselves into a single inseparable whole. But a beau- 
tiful woman is a whole as she is; you no more take her 
to pieces than a Greek statue; she is not an aggregate 
of divisible charms, she is a charm in herself. Such 

25 ever is the dividing test of pure art; if you catch your- 
self admiring its details, it is defective; you ought to 
think of it as a single whole which you must remem- 
ber, which you must admire, which somehow subdues 
you while you admire it, which is a "possession" to 

30 you "forever." 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 297 

Of course, no individual poem embodies this ideal 
perfectly; of course, every human word and phrase has 
its imperfections, and if we choose an instance to illus- 
trate that ideal, the instance has scarcely a fair chance. 
By contrasting it with the ideal, we suggest its im- 5 
perfections; by protruding it as an example, we turn on 
its defectiveness the microscope of criticism. Yet these 
two sonnets of W^ordsworth may be fitly read in this 
place, not because they are quite without faults, or be- 
cause they are the very best examples of their kind of ro 
style, but because they are luminous examples; the com- 
pactness of the sonnet and the gravity of the sentiment, 
hedging in the thoughts, restraining the fancy, and 
helping to maintain a singleness of expression. 



THE TROSSACHS 



15 



There's not a nook within this solemn pass, 

But were an apt confessional for one 

Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone, 

That life is but a tale of morning grass 

Withered at eve. From scenes of art which chase 20 

That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes 

Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, 

Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass 

Untouched, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy quest, 

If from a golden perch of aspen spray 2 s 

(October's workmanship to rival May) 

The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast 

That moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay 

Lulling the year, with all its cares, to rest I " 



290 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINISTER BRIDGE, SEPT. 3, l802 

" Earth has not anything to show more fair : 
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 
A sight so touching in its majesty : 
z This city now doth, like a garment, wear 

The beauty of the morning ; silent, bare, 
Ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples lie 
Open unto the fields and to the sky ; 
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 

10 Never did sun more beautifully steep 

In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill ; 
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep I 
The river glideth at his own sweet will : 
Dear God ! The very houses seem asleep ; 

15 And all that mighty heart is lying still 1 " 

Instances of barer style than this may easily be found, 
instances of colder style — few better instances of purer 
style. Not a single expression (the invocation in the 
concluding couplet of the second sonnet perhaps ex- 
20 cepted) can be spared, yet not a single expression rivets 
the attention. If, indeed, we take out the phrase — 

•* The city now doth, like a garment, wear 
The beauty of the morning," 

and the description of the brilliant yellow of autumn — 
25 " October's workmanship to rival May," 

they have independent value, but they are not noticed 
in the sonnet when we read it through; they fall into 
place there, and being in their place, are not seen. The 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 299 

great subjects of the two sonnets, the religious aspect 
of beautiful but grave Nature — the religious aspect of 
a city about to awaken and be alive, are the only ideas 
left in our mind. To Wordsworth has been vouch- 
safed the last grace of the self-denying artist; you think 5 
neither of him nor his style, but you cannot help think- 
ing of — you rmist recall — the exact phrase, the very sen- 
timent he wished. 

Milton's purity is more eager. In the most exciting 
parts of Wordsworth — and these sonnets are not very 10 
exciting — you always feel, you never forget, that what 
you have before you is the excitement of a recluse. 
There is nothing of the stir of hfe; nothing of the brawl 
of the world. But Milton, though always a scholar 
by trade, though solitary in old age, was through life 15 
intent on great affairs, lived close to great scenes, 
watched a revolution, and if not an actor in it, was at 
least secretary to the actors. He was familiar — by daily 
experience and habitual sympathy — with the earnest 
debate of arduous questions, on which the life and 20 
death of the speakers certainly depended, on which the 
weal or woe of the country perhaps depended. He 
knew how profoundly the individual character of the 
speakers — their inner and real nature — modifies their 
opinion on such questions; he knew how surely that na- 25 
ture will appear in the expression of them. This great 
experience, fashioned by a fine imagination, gives to the 
debate of the Satanic Council in Pandemonium its real- 
ity and its life. It is a debate in the Long Parliament, 
and though the theme of Paradise Lost obliged Milton 30 



300 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

to side with the monarchical element in the universe, 
his old habits are often too much for him; and his real 
sympathy — the impetus and energy of his nature — 
side with the rebellious element. For the purposes of 
5 art this is much better. Of a court, a poet can make 
but little; of a heaven, he can make very little; but of a 
courtly heaven, such as Milton conceived, he can make 
nothing at all. The idea of a court and the idea of a 
heaven are so radically different, that a distinct com- 

10 bination of them is always grotesque and often ludicrous. 
Paradise Lost, as a whole, is radically tainted by a vi- 
cious principle. It professes to justify the ways of God 
to man, to account for sin and death, and it tells you 
that the whole originated in a political event; in a court 

15 squabble as to a particular act of patronage and the due 
or undue promotion of an eldest son. Satan may have 
been wrong, but on Milton's theory he had an arguable 
case at least. There was something arbitrary in the 
promotion; there were little symptoms of a job; in Par- 

20 adise Lost it is always clear that the devils are the 
weaker, but it is never clear that the angels are the better. 
Milton's sympathy and his imagination slip back to 
the Puritan rebels whom he loved, and desert the courtly 
angels whom he could not love, although he praised 

25 them. There is no wonder that Milton's hell is better 
than his heaven, for he hated officials and he loved 
rebels, — he employs his genius below, and accumu- 
lates his pedantry above. On the great debate in Pan- 
demonium all his genius is concentrated. The question 

30 is very practical; it is, "What are we devils to do, now 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 301 

we have lost heaven?" Satan, who presides over and 
manipulates the assembly; Moloch, 

" The fiercest spirit 
That fought in Heaven, now fiercer by despair," 

who wants to fight again; Belial, " the man of the world," 5 
who does not want to fight any more; Mammon, who is 
for commencing an industrial career; Beelzebub, the 
official statesman, 

" Deep on his front engraven. 
Deliberation sat and Public care," 10 

who, at Satan's instance, proposes the invasion of earth, 
— are as distinct as so many statues. Even Behal, " the 
man of the world," the sort of man with whom Milton 
had least sympathy, is perfectly painted. An inferior 
artist would have made the actor who "counseled ig- 15 
noble ease and peaceful sloth," a degraded and ugly 
creature; but Milton knew better. He knew that low 
notions require a better garb than high notions. Human 
nature is not a high thing, but at least it has a high idea 
of itself; it will not accept mean maxims, unless they 20 
are gilded and made beautiful. A prophet in goatskin 
may cry, "Repent, repent," but it takes "purple and 
fine linen" to be able to say, "Continue in your sins." 
The world vanquishes vnth its speciousness and its 
show, and the orator who is to persuade men to 25 
worldliness m_ust have a share in them. Milton well 
knew this; after the warlike speech of the fierce Mo- 



302 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

loch, he introduces a brighter and a more graceful 
spirit. 

" He ended frowning, and his look denounced 
Desp'rate revenge, and battle dangerous 
5 To less than Gods. On th' other side up rose 

Belial, in act more graceful and humane : 
A fairer person lost not Heaven ; he seem'd 
For dignity composed and high exploit : 
But all was false and hollov^, though his tongue 

TO Drop manna, and could make the worse appear 

The better reason, to perplex and dash 
Maturest counsels ; for his thoughts were low ; 
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds 
Tim'rous and slothful : yet he pleased the ear, 

15 And with persuasive accent thus began : " 

He does not begin like a man with a strong case, but 
like a man with a weak case; he knows that the pride of 
human nature is irritated by mean advice, and though 
he may probably persuade men to take it, he must care- 
20 fully apologise for giving it. Here, as elsewhere, though 
the formal address is to devils, the real address is to 
men: to the human nature which we know, not to the 
fictitious diabolic nature we do not know. 

" I should be much for open war, O Peers, 
25 As not behind in hate, if what was urged 

Main reason to persuade immediate war. 
Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast 
Ominous conjecture on the whole success: 
When he who most excels in fact of arms, 
30 In what he counsels, and in what excels 

Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair, 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 303 

And utter dissolution, as the scope 

Of all his aim, after some dire revenge. 

First, what revenge ? The tow'rs of Heav'n are fill'd 

With armed watch, that render all access 

Impregnable ; oft on the bcrd'ring deep 5 

Encamp their legions, or with obscure wing 

Scout far and wide into the realm of night, 

Scorning surprise. Or could we break our way 

By force, and at our heels all Hell should rise 

With blackest insurrection, to confound 10 

Heav'n's purest light, yet our Great Enemy, 

All incorruptible, would on His throne 

Sit unpolluted, and th' ethereal mold 

Incapable of stain would soon expel 

Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire 1 5 

Victorious, Thus repulsed, our final hope 

Is flat despair. We must exasperate 

Th' Almighty Victor to spend all His rage, 

And that must end us : that must be our cure, 

To be no more ? Sad cure ; for who would lose, 2c 

Though full of pain, this intellectual being. 

Those thoughts that wander through eternity, 

To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost 

In the wide womb of uncreated night. 

Devoid of sense and motion ? And who knows, ~ 25 

Let this be good, whether our angry Foe 

Can give it, or will ever ? How He can 

Is doubtful ; that He never will is sure. 

Will He, so wise, let loose at once His ire 

BeHke through impotence, or unaware, 30 

To give His enemies their wish, and end 

Them in His anger, whom His anger saves 

To punish endless ? Wherefore cease we then ? 

Say they who counsel war, we are decreed. 

Reserved, and destined, to eternal woe ; 35 

Whatever doing, what can we suffer more, 



304 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

What can we siiffer worse ? Is this then worst, 
Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms ? " 



And so on. 

Mr. Pitt knew this speech by heart, and Lord Macau- 

5 lay has called it incomparable; and these judges of the 
oratorical art have well decided. A mean foreign policy 
cannot be better defended. Its sensibleness is effectually 
explained, and its tameness as much as possible dis- 
guised. 

10 But we have not here to do with the excellence of 
Behal's policy, but with the excellence of his speech; and 
with that speech in a pecuUar manner. This speech, 
taken with the few lines of description with which Mil- 
ton introduces it, embodies, in as short a space as pos- 

15 sible, with as much perfection as possible, the delineation 
of the type of character common at all times, dangerous 
in many times; sure to come to the surface in moments of 
difhculty, and never more dangerous than then. As 
Milton describes it, it is one among several typical char- 

20 acters which will ever have their place in great councils, 
which will ever be heard at important decisions, which 
are part of the characteristic and inalienable whole of 
this statesmanHke world. The debate in Pandemonium 
is a debate among these typical characters at the great- 

25 est conceivable crisis, and with adjuncts of solemnity 
which no other situation could rival. It is the greatest 
classical triumph, the highest achievement of the pure 
style in English literature; it is the greatest description 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 305 

of the highest and most typical characters with the most 
choice circumstances and in the fewest words. 

It is not unremarkable that we should find in Milton 
and in Paradise Lost the best specimen of pure style. 
Milton was a schoolmaster in a pedantic age, and there is 5 
nothing so unclassical — nothing so impure in style — as 
pedantry. The out-of-door conversational life of Athens 
was as opposed to bookish scholasticism as a life can be. 
The most perfect books have been written not by those 
who thought much of books, but by those who thought 10 
Httle, by those who were under the restraint of a sensi- 
tive talking world, to which books had contributed some- 
thing, and a various, eager life the rest. Milton is gen- 
erally unclassical in spirit where he is learned, and 
naturally, because the purest poets do not overlay their 15 
conceptions with book knowledge, and the classical 
poets, having in comparison no books, were under little 
temptation to impair the purity of their style by the ac- 
cumulation of their research. Over and above this, there 
is in Milton, and a little in Wordsworth also, one defect 20 
which is in the highest degree faulty and unclassical, 
which mars the effect and impairs the perfection of the 
pure style. There is a want of spontaneity, and a sense of 
effort. It has been happily said that Plato's words must 
have grown into their places. No one would say so of 25 
Milton or even of Wordsworth. About both of them 
there is a taint of duty; a vicious sense of the good man's 
task. Things seem right where they are, but they seem 
to be put where they are. Flexibility is essential to the 
consummate perfection of the pure style, because the sen- 30 
Prose — 20 



3o6 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

sation of the poet's efforts carries away our thoughts from 
his achievements. We are admiring his labors when we 
should be enjoying his words. But this is a defect in 
those two writers, not a defect in pure art. Of course it 
5 is more difficult to write in few words than to write in 
many; to take the best adjuncts, and those only, for what 
you have to say, instead of using all which comes to hand : 
it is an additional labor if you write verses in a morning, 
to spend the rest of the day in choosing, that is, in mak- 
10 ing those verses fewer. But a perfect artist in the pure 
style is as effortless and as natural as in any style, perhaps 
is more so. Take the well-known lines: — 

*' There was a little lawny islet 
By anemone and violet, 

15 Like mosaic, paven : 

And its roof was flowers and leaves 
Which the summer's breath enweaves, 
Where nor sun, nor showers, nor breeze, 
Pierce the pines and tallest trees, 

20 Each a gem engraven : 

Girt by many an azure wave 
With which the clouds and mountains pave 
A lake's blue chasm." 

Shelley had many merits and many defects. This is 
25 not the place for a complete, or indeed for any, estimate of 
him. But one excellence is most evident. His words are 
as flexible as any words; the rhythm of some modulating 
air seems to move them into their place without a struggle 
by the poet, and almost without his knowledge. This is 
30 the perfection of pure art, to embody typical conceptions 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 307 

in the choicest, the fewest accidents, to embody them 
so that each of these accidents may produce its full ef- 
fect, and so to embody them without effort. 

The extreme opposite to this pure art is what may be 
called ornate art. This species of art aims also at giving 5 
a delineation of the typical idea in its perfection and its 
fullness, but it aims at so doing in a manner most differ- 
ent. It wishes to surround the type with the greatest 
number of circumstances which it will bear. It works 
not by choice and selection, but by accumulation and 10 
aggregation. The idea is not, as in the pure style, pre- 
sented with the least clothing which it will endure, but 
with the richest and most involved clothing that it will 
admit. 

We are fortunate in not having to hunt out of past 15 
literature an illustrative specimen of the ornate style. 
Mr. Tennyson has just given one admirable in itself, and 
most characteristic of the defects and the merits of this 
style. The story of Enoch Arden, as he has enhanced and 
presented it, is a rich and splendid composite of imagery 20 
and illustration. Yet how simple that story is in itself! 
A sailor who sells fish, breaks his leg, gets dismal, gives up 
selling fish, goes to sea, is wrecked on a desert island, stays 
there some years, on his return finds his wife married to a 
miller, speaks to a landlady on the subject, and dies. 25 
Told in the pure and simple, the unadorned and classical 
style, this story would not have taken three pages, but Mr. 
Tennyson has been able to make it the principal — the 
largest tale in his new volume. He has done so only by 
giving to every event and incident in the volume an ac- 30 



3o8 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

companying commentary. He tells a great deal about 
the torrid zone, which a rough sailor like Enoch Arden 
certainly would not have perceived; and he gives to the 
fishing village, to which all the characters belong, a soft- 
5 ness and a fascination which such villages scarcely pos- 
sess in reality. 

The description of the tropical island on which the 
sailor is thrown, is an absolute model of adorned art: — 

" The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns 

lo And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, 

The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes. 
The lightning flash of insect and of bird, 
The luster of the long convolvuluses 
That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran 

15 Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows 

And glories of the broad belt of the world. 
All these he saw ; but what he fain had seen 
He could not see, the kindly human face. 
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard 

20 The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, 

The league-long roller thundering on the reef. 
The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd 
And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep 
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, 

25 As down the shore he ranged, or all day long 

Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, 
A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail : 
No sail from day to day, but every day 
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts 

30 Among the palms and ferns and precipices; 

The blaze upon the waters to the east •, 
The blaze upon his island overhead ; 
The blaze upon the waters to the west ; 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 309 

Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, 
The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again 
The scarlet shafts of sunrise — but no sail." 

No expressive circumstances can be added to this de- 
scription, no enhancing detail suggested. A much less 5 
happy instance is the description of Enoch's life before 
he sailed: — 

" While Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas, 
Or often journeying landward ; for in truth 
Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean spoil lO 

In ocean-smelling osier, and his face, 
Rough-redden'd with a thousand winter gales, 
Not only to the market cross were known, 
But in the leafy lanes behind the down, 
Far as the portal- warding lion whelp, le 

And peacock yew tree of the lonely Hall, 
Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering." 

So much has not often been made of selling fish. The 
essence of ornate art is in this manner to accumulate 
round the typical object, everything which can be said 20 
about it, every associated thought that can be connected 
with it, without impairing the essence of the delineation. 
The first defect which strikes a student of ornate art — 
the first which arrests the mere reader of it — is what is 
called a want of simplicity. Nothing is described as it is; 25 
everything has about it an atmosphere of something else. 
The combined and associated thoughts, though they set 
off and heighten particular ideas and aspects of the central 
and typical conception, yet complicate it : a simple thing — 
"a primrose by the river's brim" — is never left by itself, 30 



3IO NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

something else is put with it; something not more con- 
nected with it than the "Hon whelp" and the "peacock 
yew tree" are with the "fresh fish for sale" that Enoch 
carries past them. Even in the highest cases, ornate art 
5 leaves upon a cultured and delicate taste, the conviction 
that it is not the highest art, that it is somehow exces- 
sive and over-rich, that it is not chaste in itself or chas- 
tening to the mind that sees it — that it is in an unexplained 
manner unsatisfactory, "a thing in which we feel there is 

lo some hidden want!" 

That want is a want of "definition." We must all 
know landscapes, river landscapes especially, which are in 
the highest sense beautiful, which when we first see them 
give us a delicate pleasure; which in some — and these the 

15 best cases — give even a gentle sense of surprise that such 
things should be so beautiful, and yet when we come to 
five in them, to spend even a few hours in them, we 
seem stifled and oppressed. On the other hand there are 
people to whom the seashore is a companion, an exhilara- 

20 tion; and not so much for the brawl of the shore as for 

the limited vastness, the finite infinite of the ocean as they 

see it. Such people often come home braced and nerved, 

, and if they spoke out the truth, would have only to say, 

" We have seen the horizon line; " if they were let alone in- 

25 deed, they would gaze on it hour after hour, so great to 
them is the fascination, so full the sustaining calm, which 
they gain from that union of form and greatness. To a 
very inferior extent, but still, perhaps, to an extent which 
most people understand better, a common arch will have 

30 the same effect. A bridge completes a river landscape; if 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 311 

of the old and many-arched sort, it regulates by a long 
series of defined forms the vague outline of wood and 
river, which before had nothing to measure it; if of the 
new scientific sort, it introduces still more strictly a geo- 
metrical element; it stiffens the scenery which was before 5 
too soft, too delicate, too vegetable. Just such is the ef- 
fect of pure style in literary art. It calms by conciseness; 
while the ornate style leaves on the mind a mist of beauty, 
an excess of fascination, a complication of charm, the 
pure style leaves behind it the simple, defined, measured 10 
.idea, as it is, and by itself. That which is chaste chas- 
tens; there is a poised energy — a state half thrill, half 
tranquillity — which pure art gives, which no other can 
give; a pleasure justified as well as felt; an ennobled sat- 
isfaction at what ought to satisfy us, and must ennoble 15 
us. 

Ornate art is to pure art what a painted statue is to an 
unpainted. It is impossible to deny that a touch of color 
does bring out certain parts; does convey certain expres- 
sions; does heighten certain features, but it leaves on the 20 
work as a whole, a want, as we say, "of something; " a 
want of that inseparable chasteness which clings to simple 
sculpture, an impairing predominance of alluring details 
which impairs our satisfaction with our own satisfaction; 
which makes us doubt whether a higher being than our- 25 
selves will be satisfied even though we are so. In the very 
same manner, though the rouge of ornate literature excites 
our eye, it also impairs our confidence. 

Mr. Arnold has justly observed that this self-justifying, 
self-proving purity of style is commoner in ancient litera- 30 



312 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

ture than in modern literature, and also that Shakespeare 
is not a great or an unmixed example of it. No one can 
say that he is. His works are full of undergrowth, are 
full of complexity, are not models of style; except by a 
5 miracle, nothing in the EHzabethan age could be a model 
of style; the restraining taste of that age was feebler and 
more mistaken than that of any other equally great age. 
Shakespeare's mind so teemed with creation that he re- 
quired the most just, most forcible, most constant re- 

10 straint from without. He most needed to be guided 
among poets, and he was the least and worst guided. As 
a whole no one can call his works finished models of the 
pure style, or of any style. But he has many passages of 
the most pure style, passages which could be easily cited 

15 if space served. And we must remember that the task 
which Shakespeare undertook was the most difficult 
which any poet has ever attempted, and that it is a task in 
which after a million efforts every other poet has failed. 
The Elizabethan drama — as Shakespeare has immortal- 

20 ized it — undertakes to dehneate in five acts, under stage 
restrictions, and in mere dialogue, a whole list of drama- 
tis persoiKE, a set of characters enough for a modern 
novel, and with the distinctness of a modern novel. 
Shakespeare is not content to give two or three great char- 

25 acters in solitude and in dignity, like the classical drama- 
tists; he wishes to give a whole party of characters in the 
play of life, and according to the nature of each. He 
would " hold the mirror up to nature," not to catch a mon- 
arch in a tragic posture, but a whole group of characters 

30 engaged in many actions, intent on many purposes, think- 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 313 

ing many thoughts. There is Hfe enough, there is action 
enough, in single plays of Shakespeare to set up an ancient 
dramatist for a long career. And Shakespeare succeeded. 
His characters, taken en masse, and as a whole, are as well 
known as any novelist's characters; cultivated men know 5 
all about them, as young ladies know all about Mr. Trol- 
lope's novels. But no other dramatist has succeeded in 
such an aim. No one else's characters are staple people 
in English literature, hereditary people whom every one 
knows all about in every generation. The contempo- 10 
rary dramatists, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, 
Marlowe, etc., had many merits, some of them were 
great men. But a critic must say of them the worst thing 
he has to say: " They were men who failed in their charac- 
teristic aim;" they attempted to describe numerous sets 15 
of complicated characters, and they failed. No one of 
such characters, or hardly one, lives in common memory; 
the Faustiis of Marlowe, a really great idea, is not remem- 
bered. They undertook to write what they could not 
write— five acts full of real characters, and in consequence, 20 
the fine individual things they conceived are forgotten by 
the mixed multitude, and known only to a few of the few. 
Of the Spanish theater we cannot speak; but there are no 
such characters in any French tragedy: the whole aim of 
that tragedy forbade it. Goethe has added to literature a 25 
few great characters; he may be said almost to have added 
to literature the idea of "intellectual creation," — the idea 
of describing the great characters through the intellect; 
but he has not added to the common stock what Shake- 
speare added, a new multitude of men and women; and 30 



314 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

these not in simple attitudes, but amid the most complex 
parts of life, with all their various natures roused, mixed, 
and strained. The severest art must have allowed many 
details, much overflowing circumstance, to a poet who un- 
5 dertook to describe what almost defies description. Pure 
art would have commanded him to use details lavishly, for 
only by a multiplicity of such could the required effect have 
been at all produced. Shakespeare could accomphsh it, 
for his mind was a spring, an inexhaustible fountain, of 

10 human nature, and it is no wonder that being compelled 
by the task of his time to let the fulness of his nature over- 
flow, he sometimes let it overflow too much, and covered 
with erroneous conceits and superfluous images, charac- 
ters and conceptions which would have been far more 

15 justly, far more effectually, delineated with conciseness 
and simplicity. But there is an infinity of pure art in 
Shakespeare, although there is a great deal else also. 

It will be said, if ornate art be, as you say, an inferior 
species of art, why should it ever be used ? If pure art be 

20 the best sort of art, why should it not always be used ? 

The reason is this: literary art, as we just now explained, 
is concerned with Hteratesque characters in literatesque 
situations; and the best art is concerned with the most 
literatesque characters in the most literatesque situations. 

25 Such are the subjects of pure art; it embodies with the 
fewest touches, and under the most select and choice 
circumstances, the highest conceptions; but it does not 
foHow that only the best subjects are to be treated by art, 
and then only in the very best way. Human nature could 

30 not endure such a critical commandment as that, and 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 315 

it would be an erroneous criticism which gave it. Any 
Hteratesque character may be described in Kterature un- 
der any circumstances which exhibit its literatesqueness. 
The essence of pure art consists in its describing what 
is as it is, and this is very well for what can bear it, but 5 
there are many inferior things which will not bear it, and 
which nevertheless ought to be described in books. A 
certain kind of literature deals with illusions, and this 
kind of literature has given a coloring to the name 
romantic. A man of rare genius, and even of poetical 10 
genius, has gone so far as to make these illusions the true 
subject of poetry — almost the sole subject. 

" Without," says Father Newman, of one of his characters, 
" being himself a poet, he was in the season of poetry, in the sweet 
springtime, when the year is most beautiful because it is new. 15 
Novelty was beauty to a heart so open and cheerful as his ; not 
only because it was novelty, and had its proper charm as such, but 
because when we first see things, we see them in a gay confusion, 
which is a principal element of the poetical. As time goes on, and 
we number and sort and measure things, — as we gain views, we 20 
advance towards philosophy and truth, but we recede from poetry. 

" When we ourselves were young, we once on a time walked, 
on a hot summer day, from Oxford to Newington — a dull road, as 
any one who has gone it knows ; yet it was new to us ; and we 
protest to you, reader, believe it or not, laugh or not, as you will, 25 
to us it seemed on that occasion quite touchingly beautiful ; and 
a soft melancholy came over us, of which the shadows fall even 
now, when we look back upon that dusty, weary journey. And 
why ? because every object which met us was unknown and full of 
mystery. A tree or two in the distance seemed the beginning of a 30 
great wood, or park, stretching endlessly; a hill implied a vale be- 
yond, with that vale's history; the by-lanes, with their green 
hedges, wound on and vanished, yet were not lost to the imagina- 



31 6 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

tion. Such was our first journey ; but when we had gone it sev- 
eral times, the mind refused to act, the scene ceased to enchant, 
stern reality alone remained, and we thought it one of the most 
tiresome, odious roads we ever had occasion to traverse." 

5 That is to say, that the function of the poet is to in- 
troduce a "gay confusion," a rich medley which does not 
exist in the actual world — which perhaps could not exist 
in any world — but which would seem pretty if it did exist. 
Every one who reads Enoch Arden will perceive that this 

10 notion of all poetry is exactly applicable to this one poem. 
Whatever be made of Enoch's "Ocean spoil in ocean- 
smelHng osier," of the " portal- warding lion whelp, and 
the peacock yew tree," every one knows that in himself 
Enoch could not have been charming. People who sell 

15 fish about the country (and that is what he did, though 
Mr. Tennyson won't speak out, and wraps it up) never 
are beautiful. As Enoch was and must be coarse, in itself 
the poem must depend for a charm on a "gay confu- 
sion" — on a splendid accumulation of impossible acces- 

20 sories. 

Mr. Tennyson knows this better than any of us — he 
knows the country world; he has proved that no one living 
knows it better; he has painted with pure art — with art 
which describes what is a race perhaps more refined, more 

25 delicate, more conscientious, than the sailor — the North- 
ern Farmer, and we all know what a splendid, what a liv- 
ing thing, he has made of it. He could, if he only would, 
have given us the ideal sailor in like manner — the ideal of 
the natural sailor we mean — the characteristic present 

30 man as he lives and is. But this he has not chosen. He 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 317 

has endeavored to describe an exceptional sailor, at an ex- 
ceptionally refined port, performing a graceful act, an act 
of relinquishment. And with this task before him, his pro- 
found taste taught him that ornate art was a necessary 
medium— was the sole effectual instrument— for his pur- 5 
pose. It was necessary for him if possible to abstract the 
mind from reality, to induce us not to conceive or think of 
sailors as they are while we are reading of his sailors, but 
to think of what a person who did not know, might fancy 
sailors to be. A casual traveler on the seashore, with the 10 
sensitive mood and the romantic imagination Dr. New- 
man has described, might fancy, would fancy, a seafaring 
village to be like that. Accordingly, Mr. Tennyson has 
made it his aim to call off the stress of fancy from real life, 
to occupy it otherwise, to bury it with pretty accessories; 15 
to engage it on the "peacock yew tree," and the "portal- 
warding lion whelp." Nothing, too, can be more splendid 
than the description of the tropics as Mr. Tennyson de- 
lineates them, but a sailor would not have felt the tropics 
in that manner. The beauties of Nature would not have 20 
so much occupied him. He would have known little of 
the scarlet shafts of sunrise and nothing of the long con- 
volvuluses. As in Robinson Crusoe, his own petty con- 
trivances and his small ailments would have been the 
principal subject to him. "For three years," he might 25 
have said, "my back was bad; and then I put two pegs 
into a piece of driftwood and so made a chair; and after 
that it pleased God to send me a chill." In real life his 
piety would scarcely have gone beyond that. 
It will indeed be said, that though the sailor had no 30 



31 8 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

words for, and even no explicit consciousness of, the splen- 
did details of the torrid zone, yet that he had, notwith- 
standing, a dim latent inexpressible conception of them: 
though he could not speak of them or describe them, yet 
5 they were much to him. And doubtless such is the case. 
Rude people are impressed by what is beautiful — deeply 
impressed — though they could not describe what they see, 
or what they feel. But what is absurd in Mr. Tennyson's 
description — absurd when we abstract it from the gor- 

lo geous additions and ornaments with which Mr. Tennyson 
distracts us — is, that his hero feels nothing else but these 
great splendors. We hear nothing of the physical ail- 
ments, the rough devices, the low superstitions, which 
really would have been the jirst things, the favorite and 

15 principal occupations of his mind. Just so when he gets 
home he may have had such fine sentiments, though it is 
odd, and he 7nay have spoken of them to his landlady, 
though that is odder still, — but it is incredible that his 
whole mind should be made up of fine sentiments. Be- 

20 sides those sweet feelings, if he had them, there must have 
been many more obvious, more prosaic, and some perhaps 
more healthy. Mr. Tennyson has shown a profound 
judgment in distracting us as he does. He has given us a 
classic delineation of the Northern Farmer with no orna- 

25 ment at all — as bare a thing as can be — because he then 
wanted to describe a true type of real men; he has given 
us a sailor crowded all over with ornament and illustra- 
tion because he then wanted to describe an unreal type of 
fancied men, — not sailors as they are, but sailors as they 

30 might be wished. 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 319 

Another prominent element in Enoch Arden is yet 
more suitable to, yet more requires the aid of, ornate art. 
Mr. Tennyson undertook to deal with half belief. The 
presentiments which Annie feels are exactly of that sort 
which everybody has felt, and which every one has 5 
half believed — which hardly any one has more than half 
beHeved. Almost every one, it has been said, would be 
angry if any one else reported that he believed in ghosts; 
yet hardly any one, when thinking by himself, wholly 
disbeheves them. Just so such presentiments as Mr. 10 
Tennyson depicts, impress the inner mind so much that 
the outer mind — the rational understanding — hardly likes 
to consider them nicely or to discuss them skeptically. For 
these dubious themes an ornate or complex style is need- 
ful. Classical art speaks out what it has to say plainly and 1 5 
simply. Pure style cannot hesitate; it describes in con- 
cisest outline what is, as it is. If a poet really believes in 
presentiments he can speak out in pure style. One who 
could have been a poet — one of the few in any age of 
whom one can say certainly that they could have been 20 
and have not been — has spoken thus: — 

" When Heaven sends sorrow, 
Warnings go first, 
Lest it should burst 

With stunning might 25 

On souls too bright 

To fear the morrow. 

*' Can science bear us 

To the hid springs 

Of human things ? -50 



320 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Why may not dream, 
Or thought's day-gleam, 
Startle, yet cheer ? 

" Are such thoughts fetters, 
5 While faith disowns 

Dread of earth's tones. 
Recks but Heaven's call, 
And on the wall, 

Reads but Heaven's letters?" 

TO But if a poet is not sure whether presentiments are true 
or not true; if he wishes to leave his readers in doubt; if he 
wishes an atmosphere of indistinct illusion and of moving 
shadow, he must use the romantic style, the style of miscel- 
laneous adjunct, the style " which shirks, not meets" your 

15 intellect, the style which, as you are scrutinizing, disap- 
pears. 

Nor is this all, or even the principal lesson, which Enoch 
Arden may suggest to us, of the use of ornate art. That 
art is the appropriate art for an unpleasing type. Many of 

20 the characters of real life, if brought distinctly, prom- 
inently, and plainly before the mind, as they really are, if 
shown in their inner nature, their actual essence, are 
doubtless very unpleasant. They would be horrid to meet 
and horrid to think of. We fear it must be owned that 

25 Enoch Arden is this kind of person. A dirty sailor who 
did not go home to his wife is not an agreeable being: a 
varnish must be put on him to make him shine. It is true 
that he acts rightly; that he is very good. But such is 
human nature that it finds a little tameness in mere moral- 

30 ity. Mere virtue belongs to a charity-school girl, and has 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 32 1 

a taint of the catechism. All of us feel this, though most 
of us are too timid, too scrupulous, too anxious about the 
virtue of others to speak out. We are ashamed of our 
nature in this respect, but it is not the less our nature. 
And if we look deeper into the matter there are many rea- 5 
sons why we should not be ashamed of it. The soul of 
man, and, as we necessarily believe, of beings greater than 
man, has many parts besides its moral part. It has an 
intellectual part, an artistic part, even a rehgious part, 
in which mere morals have no share. In Shakespeare or 10 
Goethe, even in Newton or Archimedes, there is much 
which will not be cut down to the shape of the command- 
ments. They have thoughts, feelings, hopes — immortal 
thoughts and hopes — which have influenced the Hfe of 
men, and the souls of men, ever since their age, but which 15 
the "whole duty of man/' the ethical compendium, 
does not recognise. Nothing is more unpleasant than a 
virtuous person with a mean mind. A highly developed 
moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, 
an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited reli- 20 
gious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit 
of human nature— a good bit, of course— but a bit only, 
in disproportionate, unnatural, and revolting prominence; 
and therefore, unless an artist use delicate care, we are 
offended. The dismal act of a squalid man needed many 25 
condiments to make it pleasant, and therefore Mr. Tenny- 
son was right to mix them subtly and to use them freely. 
A mere act of self-denial can indeed scarcely be pleasant 
upon paper. A heroic struggle with an external adversary, 
even though it end in defeat, may easily be made attrac- 30 
Prose — 2 1 



322 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

tive. Human nature likes to see itself look grand, and it 
looks grand when it is making a brave struggle with for- 
eign foes. But it does not look grand when it is divided 
against itself. An excellent person striving with tempta- 
5 tion is a very admirable being in reality, but he is not a 
pleasant being in description. We hope he will win and 
overcome his temptation; but we feel that he would be a 
more interesting being, a higher being, if he had not felt 
that temptation so much. The poet must make the strug- 

10 gle great in order to make the self-denial virtuous, and if 
the struggle be too great, we are apt to feel some mixture 
of contempt. The internal metaphysics of a divided 
nature are but an inferior subject for art, and if they are 
to be made attractive, much else must be combined with 

15 them. If the excellence of Hamlet had depended on the 
ethical qualities of Hamlet, it would not have been the 
masterpiece of our Hterature. He acts virtuously of 
course, and kills the people he ought to kill, but Shake- 
speare knew that such goodness would not much interest 

20 the pit. He made him a handsome prince and a puzzling 
meditative character; these secular qualities relieve his 
moral excellence, and so he becomes "nice." In propor- 
tion as an artist has to deal with types essentially imper- 
fect, he must disguise their imperfections; he must accu- 

25 mulate around them as many first-rate accessories as may 
make his readers forget that they are themselves second- 
rate. The sudden millionaires of the present day hope to 
disguise their social defects by buying old places, and hid- 
ing among aristocratic furniture; just so a great artist who 

30 has to deal with characters artistically imperfect, will use 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 323 

an ornate style, will fit them into a scene where there is 
much else to look at. 

For these reasons ornate art is, within the limits, as le- 
gitimate as pure art. It does what pure art could not do. 
The very excellence of pure art confines its employment. 5 
Precisely because it gives the best things by themselves 
and exactly as they are, it fails when it is necessary to de- 
scribe inferior things among other things, with a list of 
enhancements and a crowd of accompaniments that in 
reality do not belong to it. Illusion, half belief, unpleas- 10 
ant types, imperfect types, are as much the proper sphere 
of ornate art, as an inferior landscape is the proper sphere 
for the true eflScacy of moonlight. A really great land- 
scape needs sunlight and bears sunlight; but moonlight is 
an equalizer of beauties; it gives a romantic unreality to 15 
what will not stand the bare truth. And just so does ro- 
mantic art. 

There is, however, a third kind of art which differs from 
these on the point in which they most resemble one an- 
other. Ornate art and pure art have this in common, that 20 
they paint the types of literature in a form as perfect as 
they can. Ornate art, indeed, uses undue disguises and 
unreal enhancements; it does not confine itself to the best 
types; on the contrary, it is its office to make the best of 
imperfect types and lame approximations; but ornate art, 25 
as much as pure art, catches its subject in the best light it 
can, takes the most developed aspect of it which it can 
find, and throws upon it the most congruous colours it 
can use. But grotesque art does just the contrary. It 
takes the type, so to say, in difficulties. It gives a repre- 30 



324 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

sentation of it in its minimum development, amid the 
circumstances least favorable to it, just while it is 
struggling with obstacles, just where it is encumbered 
with incongruities. It deals, to use the language of 
5 science, not with normal types but with abnormal speci- 
mens; to use the language of old philosophy, not with 
what Nature is striving to be, but with what by some 
lapse she has happened to become. 

This art works by contrast. It enables you to see, it 

lo makes you see, the perfect type by painting the opposite 
deviation. It shows you what ought to be by what ought 
not to be; when complete, it reminds you of the perfect 
image, by showing you the distorted and imperfect image. 
Of this art we possess in the present generation one 

15 prolific master. Mr. Browning is an artist working 
by incongruity. Possibly hardly one of his most con- 
siderable efforts can be found which is not great because 
of its odd mixture. He puts together things which no 
one else would have put together, and produces on our 

20 minds a result which no one else would have produced, 
or tried to produce. His admirers may not like all we 
may have to say of him. But in our way we too are 
among his admirers. No one ever read him without 
seeing not only his great ability but his great mind. 

25 He not only possesses superficial usable talents, 
but the strong something, the inner secret something, 
which uses them and controls them; he is great not in 
mere accomplishments, but in himself. He has appHed 
a hard strong intellect to real life; he has applied the 

30 same intellect to the problems of his age. He has 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 325 

striven to know what is: he has endeavored not to be 
cheated by counterfeits, not to be infatuated with illu- 
sions. His heart is in what he says. He has battered 
his brain against his creed till he believes it. He has 
accomphshments too, the more effective because they 5 
are mixed. He is at once a student of mysticism and 
a citizen of the world. He brings to the club sofa dis- 
tinct visions of old creeds, intense images of strange 
thoughts: he takes to the bookish student tidings of 
wild Bohemia, and little traces of the demimonde. He 10 
puts down what is good for the naughty, and what is 
naughty for the good. Over women his easier writ- 
ings exercise that imperious power which belongs to 
the writings of a great man of the world upon such 
matters. He knows women, and therefore they wish 15 
to know him. If we blame many of Browning's efforts, 
it is in the interest of art, and not from a wish to hurt or 
degrade him. 

If we wanted to illustrate the nature of grotesque art 
by an exaggerated instance, we should have selected a 20 
poem which the chance of late publication brings us 
in this new volume. Mr. Browning has undertaken 
to describe what may be called mind in diffiadties — 
mind set to make out the universe under the worst 
and hardest circumstances. He takes Caliban, not 25 
perhaps exactly Shakespeare's Caliban, but an analo- 
gous and worse creature; a strong thinking power, but 
a nasty creature — a gross animal, uncontrolled and 
unelevated by any feeling of religion or duty. The 
delineation of him will show that Mr. Browning does 30 



326 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

not wish to take undue advantage of his readers by a 
choice of nice subjects. 

" ' Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, 
Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, 
5 With elbows wide, fists cUnched to prop his chin. 

And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, 
And feels about his spine small eft-things course. 
Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh : 
And while above his head a pompion plant, 
10 Coating the cave top as a brow its eye, 

Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard. 

And now a flower drops with a bee inside, 

And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch, — " 

This pleasant creature proceeds to give his idea of the 
15 origin of the Universe, and it is as follows. CaHban 
speaks in the third person, and is of opinion that the 
maker of the Universe took to making it on account of 
his personal discomfort: — 

" Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos I 
20 'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon. 

" 'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match, 
But not the stars ; the stars came otherwise ; 
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that : 
Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon, 
25 And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same. 

" 'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease : 
He hated that He cannot change His cold, 
Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish 
That longed to 'scape the rock stream w^here she lived, 
30 And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine 

O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 327 

A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave ; 

Only, she ever sickened, found repulse 

At the other kind of water, not her life, 

(Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun, ) 

Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe, c 

And in her old bounds buried her despair. 

Hating and loving warmth alike : so He. 

'• 'Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle. 
Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing. 
Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech; 10 

Yon auk, one fire-eye, in a ball of foam, 
That floats and feeds ; a certain badger brown 
He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye 
By moonlight ; and the pie with the long tongue 
That pricks deep into oakwarts for a worm, I r 

And says a plain word when she finds her prize. 
But will not eat the ants ; the ants themselves 
That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks 
About their hole — He made all these and more. 
Made all we see, and us, in spite : how else ? " 20 

It may seem perhaps to most readers that these lines 
are very difficult, and that they are unpleasant. And 
so they are. We quote them to illustrate, not the suc- 
cess of grotesque art but the nature of grotesque art. 
It shows the end at which this species of art aims, and 25 
if it fails it is from overboldness in the choice of a sub- 
ject by the artist, or from the defects of its execution. 
A thinking faculty more in difficulties — a great type — 
an inquisitive, searching intellect under more disagree- 
able conditions, with worse helps, more likely to find 30 
falsehood, less likely to find truth, can scarcely be 
imagined. Nor is the mere description of the thought 



328 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

at all bad: on the contrary, if we closely examine it, it is 
very clever. Hardly any one could have amassed so 
many ideas at once nasty and suitable. But scarcely 
any readers — any casual readers — who are not of the 
5 sect of Mr. Browning's admirers will be able to examine 
it enough to appreciate it. From a defect, partly of 
subject, and partly of style, many of Mr. Browning's 
works make a demand upon the reader's zeal and sense 
of duty to which the nature of most readers is unequal. 

10 They have on the turf the convenient expression "stay- 
ing power:" some horses can hold on and others cannot. 
But hardly any reader not of especial and peculiar 
nature can hold on through such composition. There 
is not enough of "staying power" in human nature. 

15 One of his greatest admirers once owned to us that he 
seldom or never began a new poem without looking on 
in advance, and foreseeing with caution what length of 
intellectual adventure he was about to commence. 
Whoever will work hard at such poems will find much 

20 mind in them: they are a sort of quarry of ideas, 
but whosoever goes there will find these ideas in such 
a jagged, ugly, useless shape that he can hardly bear 
them. 

We are not judging Mr. Browning simply from a hasty, 

25 recent production. All poets are liable to misconcep- 
tions, and if such a piece as Caliban upon Setehos were 
an isolated error, a venial and particular exception, 
we should have given it no prominence. We have put 
it forward because it just elucidates both our subject 

30 and the characteristics of Mr. Browning. But many 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 329 

other of his best known pieces do so almost equally; 
what several of his devotees think his best piece is 
quite enough illustrative for anything we want. It 
appears that on Holy Cross day at Rome the Jews 
were obliged to listen to a Christian sermon in the hope 5 
of their conversion, though this is, according to Mr. 
Browning, what they really said when they came away : — 

" Fee, faw, fum 1 bubble and squeak ! 
Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week. 
Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough, 10 

Stinking and savory, smug and gruff. 
Take the church road, for the bell's due chime 
Gives us the summons — 't is sermon-time 1 

" Boh, here's Barnabas ! Job, that's you ? 
Up stumps Solomon — bustling too ? 15 

Shame, man ! greedy beyond your years 
To handsel the bishop's shaving-shears? 
Fair play's a jewel I leave friends in the lurch ? 
Stand on a line ei e you start for the church ! 

" Higgledy, piggledy, packed we lie, 20 

Rats in a hamper, swine in a sty. 
Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve. 
Worms in a carcase, fleas in a sleeve. 
Hist ! square shoulders, settle your thumbs 
And buzz for the bishop — here he comes." 25 

And after similar nice remarks for a church, the edi- 
fied congregation concludes: — 

•* But now, while the scapegoats leave our flock, 
And the rest sit silent and count the clock, 



330 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Since forced to muse the appointed time 
On these precious facts and truths sublime, — 
Let us fitly employ it, under our breath, 
In saying Ben Ezra's Song of Death. 

5 " For Rabbi Ben Ezra, the night he died, 

Called sons and sons' sons to his side, 
And spoke, ' This world has been harsh and strange 
Something is wrong : there needeth a change. 
But what, or where? at the last or first? 
10 In one point only we sinned, at worst. 

" ' The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet, 
And again in his border see Israel set. 
When Judah beholds Jerusalem, 
The stranger-seed shall be joined to them : 
15 To Jacob's House shall the Gentiles cleave. 

So the Prophet saith and his sons believe. 

" ' Ay, the children of the chosen race 

Shall carry and bring them to their place : 
In the land of the Lord shall lead the same, 
20 Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame. 

When the slave enslave, the oppressed ones o'er 
The oppressor triumph forevermore ? 

■' * God spoke, and gave us the word to keep : 
Bade never fold the hands nor sleep 
25 'Mid a faithless world, — at watch and ward, 

Till Christ at the end relieve our guard. 
By His servant Moses the watch was set : 
Though near upon cock-crow, we keep it yet 

•' ' Thou ! if Thou wast He, who at mid watch came, 
30 By the starlight, naming a dubious Name 1 

And if, too heavy with sleep — too rash 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 33 1 

With fear — O Thou, if that martyr gash 
Fell on Thee coming to take Thine own, 
And we gave the Cross, when we owed the Throne — 

" * Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus. 

But, the Judgment over, join sides with us 1 5 

Thine too is the cause ! and not more Thine 
Than ours, is the work of these dogs and svdne. 
Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed, 
Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Thee in deed 1 

"♦We withstood Christ then? be mindful how 10 

At least we withstand Barabbas now 1 
Was our outrage sore ? But the worst we spared, 
To have called these — Christians, had we dared 1 
Let defiance to them pay mistrust of Thee, 
And Rome make amends for Calvary ! 15 

" ' By the torture, prolonged from age to age. 
By the infamy, Israel's heritage, 
By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace, 
By the badge of shame, by the felon's place, 
By the branding-tool, the bloody whip, 20 

And the summons to Christian fellowship, — 

" ' We boast our proof that at last the Jew 

Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew. 

Thy face took never so deep a shade 

But we fought them in it, God our aid ! 25 

A trophy to bear, as we march, Thy band, 

South, East, and on to the Pleasant Land 1 ' " 

It is very natural that a poet whose wishes incHne, 
or whose genius conducts, him to a grotesque art, should 
be attracted towards mediaeval subjects. There is no 30 
age whose legends are so full of grotesque subjects, 



^;^2 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

and no age whose real life was so fit to suggest them. 
Then, more than at any other time, good principles 
have been under great hardships. The vestiges of 
ancient civilization, the germs of modern civilization, 
5 the little remains of what had been, the small begin- 
nings of what is, were buried under a cumbrous mass 
of barbarism and cruelty. Good elements hidden in 
horrid accompaniments are the special theme of gro- 
tesque art, and these mediaeval life and legends afford 

10 more copiously than could have been furnished before 
Christianity gave its new elements of good, or since 
modern civiHzation has removed some few at least of 
the old elements of destruction. A buried Hie like the 
spiritual mediaeval was Mr. Browning's natural ele- 

15 ment, and he was right to be attracted by it. His mis- 
take has been, that he has not made it pleasant; that he 
has forced his art to topics on which no one could charm, 
or on which he, at any rate, could not; that on these 
occasions and in these poems he has failed in fascinat- 

20 ing men and women of sane taste. 

We say "sane" because there is a most formidable 
and estimable insane taste. The will has great though 
indirect power over the taste, just as it has over the 
belief. There are some horrid beliefs from which hu- 

25 man nature revolts, from which at first it shrinks, 
to which, at first, no effort can force it. But if we fix 
the mind upon them they have a power over us just 
because of their natural offensiveness. They are like 
the sight of human blood: experienced soldiers tell us 

30 that at first men are sickened by the smell and new- 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING T,^^ 

ness of blood almost to death and fainting, but as soon 
as they harden their hearts and stiffen their minds, 
as soon as they will bear it, then comes an appetite for 
slaughter, a tendency to gloat on carnage, to love blood, 
at least for the moment, with a deep, eager love. It 5 
is a principle that if we put down a healthy instinctive 
aversion. Nature avenges herself by creating an un- 
healthy insane attraction. For this reason, the most 
earnest truth-seeking men fall into the worst delusions; 
they will not let their mind alone; they force it towards 10 
some ugly thing, which a crochet of argument, a con- 
ceit of intellect recommends, and Nature punishes 
their disregard of her warning by subjection to the ugly 
one, by behef in it. Just so the most industrious crit- 
ics get the most admiration. They think it unjust to 15 
rest in their instinctive natural horror: they overcome 
it, and angry Nature gives them over to ugly poems and 
marries them to detestable stanzas. 

Mr. Browning possibly, and some of the worst of 
Mr. Browning's admirers certainly, will say that these 20 
grotesque objects exist in real life, and therefore they 
ought to be, at least may be, described in art. But, 
though pleasure is not the end of poetry, pleasing is a 
condition of poetry. An exceptional monstrosity of 
horrid ugliness cannot be made pleasing, except it be 25 
made to suggest — to recall — the perfection, the beauty, 
from which it is a deviation. Perhaps in extreme 
cases no art is equal to this; but then such self-imposed 
problems should not be worked by the artist; these out- 
of-the-way and detestable subjects should be let alone 30 



334 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

by him. It is rather characteristic of Mr. Browning 
to neglect this rule. He is the most of a realist, and 
the least of an idealist, of any poet we know. He evi- 
dently sympathizes with some part at least of Bishop 
5 Blougram's apology. Anyhow this world exists. "There 
is good wine — there are pretty women — there are com- 
fortable benefices — there is money, and it is pleasant 
to spend it. Accept the creed of your age and you get 
these, reject that creed and you lose them. And for 

lo what do you lose them? For a fancy creed of your 
own, which no one else will accept, which hardly any 
one will call a 'creed,' which most people will consider 
a sort of unbehef." Again, Mr. Browning evidently 
loves what we may call the realism, the grotesque real- 

15 ism, of orthodox Christianity. Many parts of it in 
which great divines have felt keen difficulties are quite 
pleasant to him. He must see his religion, he must 
have an "object lesson" in believing. He must have 
a creed that will ake, which wins and holds the mis- 

20 cellaneous world, which stout men will heed, which 
nice women will adore. The spare moments of soli- 
tary religion — the "obstinate questionings," the high 
"instincts," the "first affections," the "shadowy re- 
collections," 

25 " Which, be they what they may, 

Are yet the fountain-light of all our day — 
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing ; " 

the great but vague faith — the unutterable tenets — 

seem to him worthless, visionary; they are not enough 

30 "immersed in matter;" they move about " in worlds not 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 335 

realized." We wish he could be tried like the prophet 
once; he would have found God in the earthquake 
and the storm; he would have deciphered from them 
a bracing and rough rehgion: he would have known 
that crude men and ignorant women felt them too, 5 
and he would accordingly have trusted them; but he 
would have distrusted and disregarded the "still small 
voice:" he would have said it was "fancy"— a thing 
you thought you heard to-day, but were not sure you 
had heard to-morrow: he would call it a nice illusion, 10 
an immaterial prettiness; he would ask triumphantly, 
"How are you to get the mass of men to heed this little 
thing?" he would have persevered and insisted, ''My 
wije does not hear it." 

But although a suspicion of beauty, and a taste for 15 
ugly reality, have led Mr. Browning to exaggerate 
the functions and to caricature the nature of grotesque 
art, we own, or rather we maintain, that he has given 
many excellent specimens of that art within its proper 
boundaries and limits. Take an example, his picture 20 
of what we may call the bourgeois nature in difficulties; 
in the utmost difficulty, in contact with magic and the 
supernatural. He has made of it something homely, 
comic, true; reminding us of what bourgeois nature 
really is. By showing us the type under abnormal 25 
conditions, he reminds us of the type under its best and 
most satisfactory conditions. 

[Bagehot here quotes T/ie Pied Piper of Hamelin.'] 

Something more we had to say of Mr. Browning, 



336 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

but we must stop. It is singularly characteristic of 
this age that the poems which rise to the surface should 
be examples of ornate art, and grotesque art, not of 
pure art. We Hve in the realm of the half educated. 
5 The number of readers grows daily, but the quality of 
readers does not improve rapidly. The middle class 
is scattered, heedless; it is well-meaning, but aim- 
less; wishing to be wise, but ignorant how to be wise. 
The aristocracy of England never was a literary aris- 

To tocracy, never even in the days of its full power, of its 
unquestioned predominance, did it guide — did it even 
seriously try to guide — the taste of England. With- 
out guidance young men, and tired men, are thrown 
amongst a mass of books; they have to choose which 

15 they like; many of them would much like to improve 
their culture, to chasten their taste, if they knew how. 
But left to themselves they take, not pure art but showy 
art; not that which permanently relieves the eye and makes 
it happy whenever it looks, and as long as it looks, but 

20 glaring art which catches and arrests the eye for a mo- 
ment, but which in the end fatigues it. But before the 
wholesome remedy of nature — the fatigue — arrives, the 
hasty reader has passed on to some new excitement, 
which in its turn stimulates for an instant, and then is 

25 passed by forever. These conditions are not favorable 
to the due appreciation of pure art — of that art which 
must be known before it is admired — which must have 
fastened irrevocably on the brain before you appre- 
ciate it — which you must love ere it will seem worthy 

30 of your love. Women too, whose voice on literature 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWNING 337 

counts as well as that of men — and in a light literature 
counts for more than that of men — women, such as 
we know them, such as they are likely to be, ever prefer 
a delicate unreality to a true or firm art. A dressy 
literature, an exaggerated literature seem to be fated 5 
to us. These are our curses, as other times had theirs. 

"And yet • 
Think not the living times forget, 
Ages of heroes fought and fell, 

That Homer in the end might tell ; 10 

O'er groveling generations past 
Upstood the Doric fane at last ; 
And countless hearts on countless years 
Had wasted thoughts, and hopes, and fears, 
Rude laughter and unmeaning tears ; 15 

Ere England Shakespeare saw, or Rome 
The pure perfection of her dome. 
Others I doubt not if not we, 
The issue of our toils shall see ; 

Young children gather as their own 20 

The harvest that the dead had shown, 
The dead forgotten and unknown." 



Prosa — 22 



WALTER HORATIO PATER 

[Walter Horatio Pater was born in London, August 4, 1839, 
and was graduated B. A. at Queen's College, Oxford, in 1862. The 
greater portion of his unusually retired life was spent at Oxford. 
Pater's visit to Italy in 1869 decided the growing struggle be- 
tween art and the church, and from that time on, until his death 
in 1894, Pater's task was the interpretation of the Renaissance to 
the modern world. Aside from the expository value of Pater's 
work, it is chiefly famed for the beauty and accuracy of its style. 
Pater's chief essays now appear under the general titles Imaginary 
Portraits, Appreciations, Plato and Platonism, and The Renais- 
sance: Studies in Art a?td Poetry. Besides these he made two at- 
tempts at the longer narrative form in Marius the Epicurean and 
the unfinished Gaston de Latour.'\ 

Some one has called The Renaissance: Studies in Art 
and Poetry Pater's "golden book" because it contains 
the best work of that most careful writer. And of all 
the essays in the volume that on Leonardo da Vinci is 
the best. First of all Walter Pater was a styHst; secondly 
he was the expounder in nineteenth century England of 
the subtler meanings of the Italian Renaissance. In 
this essay structure and phrase adapt themselves most 
easily to the expression of the deepest interests of Pater's 
life. And the result is a masterpiece. 

Our interest in Pater lies first in his peculiar theories 
of literary art. For no English writer has ever before 
gained the effects in style that Pater gained. It will 
be noticed that in this essay Pater gives us the careful 
etching of a character. With little care for the sequence 
of events he seeks to give the static impression of a 
finished study. This is representative of all of Pater's 
338 



WALTER HORATIO PATER 339 

work. As far as possible he avoids the effect of move- 
ment and of climax. He never varies the tempo what- 
ever may be the interest or the suspense. Like painting 
and sculpture his art is an art of design, and not, Hke 
drama .for instance, an expanding and developing art 
of cumulative appeals. 

Along with the advantages of this static style there 
are certain disadvantages. For one thing the' author is 
obscured far behind his work. There is a lack of warmth 
and spontaneity. Predetermination is manifest every- 
where. The artistry is so fine that while it does not 
obtrude itself the reader is conscious of it. Even the 
pathos is the artist's pathos rather than the surrendered 
passion of the lover of humanity. Sorrow itself is tacitly 
accepted as a thing to be treated in adequate artistic 
guise; just as Leonardo, with studied forethought, draws 
Beatrice d'Este "in sad earth-colored raiment, set 
with pale stones." 

Pater's style is marked by two qualities, exactitude 
and mystery. He sought the ends of exactitude in his 
careful use of words. Like Flaubert in France, Pater 
believed that there is one word for every idea. And to 
him the word was more than a mechanical symbol. 
All the charm of that word lay for him in its hidden 
and reminiscent meanings rather than in its etymology. 
Yet by studying etymology he was enabled to give 
quaint turns to words, gaining in the midst of our loose 
meanings the novelty of beautiful historical preciseness. 
So in Leonardo he speaks of "implicated hands" and 
again he says that the image was "projected." 

That "curiosity" which came so near to kilHng the 
art in Leonardo, but which finally served more highly 
to refine the old beauty, was Pater's also. This is the 
second distinctive quality of his marvelous style. Some 
say that Pater's style is obscure. It is better to say 
that it is rich in mystery, that it fascinates us as does 



340 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

the work of Leonardo da Vinci by ''something enig- 
matical beyond the usual measure of great men." Pure 
logic was but a portion of Pater's world. To this he 
added color, tone, and atmosphere. Therefore his 
style was sinuous, lithe, and complex but never tortuous 
and turbid. It was not his desire that all of the beau- 
ties of his style should be on the surface. Behind the 
immediate interest of rational statement there is al- 
ways the more recondite beauty of veiled allusion or 
lingering reminiscence. Of Pater's style one can say, 
as of the sea, that its depth is a factor in its surface im- 
pressiveness. 

We have said that Pater is an etcher and not a nar- 
rator. This is true even in his novels. In Mariiis the 
Epicurean a character is engraved, as if the successive 
changes were in fact but revelations of that which had 
existed from the first. But in Leonardo th^ appearance 
of a chronological order is given in the fact that the life 
of the great painter seems to fall into three clearly 
marked divisions. Beginning with the master note of 
Leonardo's character, the author then presents the ar- 
tist's childhood in a series of quick flashing images and 
allusions. The rest of the essay is a discussion of the 
operation of Leonardo's curiosity upon the works of his 
life. Sometimes it drove him to the essaying of im- 
possible things; sometimes to investigation and analysis. 
Just when his curiosity seemed about to mislead him 
into fruitless paths, he makes it the servant of his crav- 
ing for beauty. Curiosity and the desire of beauty are 
the elementary forces in his genius. As both of these 
forces were strong, Leonardo's was a new art. He 
painted the withdrawn, the refined, the recherche. In 
nature he searched for the fleeting charm. Because in 
La Gioconda, above all his work, he found and stated 
the evanescent factors of personality, this is the crown 
of his achievement. 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 34 1 

Not to see too much of an author in his work or to 
stretch his exposition of a loved historical figure to serve 
unduly as self-revelation, it cannot but seem that Pater 
saw in Leonardo the ideals that he himself espoused. 
Walter Pater writes always with the reader well out of 
view. So also he is careful to make his criticism ob- 
jective. But one cannot but read in the overwhelming 
eloquence of the end of the essay that the "curious 
beauty" which Leonardo da Vinci sought and found was 
to Pater, this "lover of strange souls," the end supremely 
to be desired. 

LEONARDO DA VINCI 

In Vasari's life of Leonardo da Vinci as we now read 
it there are some variations from the first edition. There, 
the painter who has fixed the outward type of Christ 
for succeeding centuries was a bold speculator, holding 
lightly by other men's beliefs, setting philosophy above 5 
Christianity. Words of his, trenchant enough to justify 
this impression, are not recorded, and would have been 
out of keeping with a genius of which one characteristic 
is the tendency to lose itself in a refined and graceful 
mystery. The suspicion was but the time-honored mode ic 
in which the world stamps its appreciation of one who 
has thoughts for himself alone, his high indifference, 
his intolerance of the common forms of things; and in 
the second edition the image was changed into some- 
thing fainter and more conventional. But it is still by 15 
a certain mystery in his work, and something enigmat- 
ical beyond the usual measure of great men, that he 
fascinates, or perhaps half repels. His fife is one of 



342 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

sudden revolts, with intervals in which he works not at 
all, or apart from the main scope of his work. By a 
strange fortune the works on which his more popular 
fame rested disappeared early from the world, as the 
5 Battle of the Standard; or are mixed obscurely with the 
work of meaner hands, as the Last Supper. His type 
of beauty is so exotic that it fascinates a larger number 
than it delights, and seems more than that of any other 
artist to reflect ideas and views and some scheme of the 

10 world within; so that he seemed to his contemporaries 
to be the possessor of some unsanctified and secret wis- 
dom; as to Michelet and others to have anticipated 
modern ideas. He trifles with his genius, and crowds 
all his chief work into a few tormented years of later 

15 life; yet he is so possessed by his genius that he passes 

unmoved through the most tragic events, overwhelming 

his country and friends, Kke one who comes across them 

by chance on some secret errand. 

His legend, as the French say, with the anecdotes 

20 which every one knows, is one of the most brilliant in 
Vasari. Later writers merely copied it, until, in 1804, 
Carlo Amoretti applied to it a criticism which left hardly 
a date fixed, and not one of those anecdotes untouched. 
The various questions thus raised have since that time 

25 become, one after another, subjects of special study, 
and mere antiquarianism has in this direction little 
more to do. For others remain the editing of the thir- 
teen books of his manuscripts, and the separation by 
technical criticism of what i-n his reputed works is really 

30 his, from what is only half his, or the work of his pupils. 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 343 

But a lover of strange souls may still analyze for himself 
the impression made on him by those works, and try 
to reach through it a definition of the chief elements of 
Leonardo's genius. The legend, corrected and enlarged 
by its critics, may now and then intervene to support 5 
the results of this analysis. 

His life has three divisions — thirty years at Florence, 
nearly twenty years at Milan, then nineteen years of 
wandering, till he sinks to rest under the protection of 
Francis the First at the Chateau de Clou. The dishonor 10 
of illegitimacy hangs over his birth. Piero Antonio, 
his father, was of a noble Florentine house, of Vinci in 
the Val d^Arno, and Leonardo, brought up delicately 
among the true children of that house, was the love- 
child of his youth, with the keen, puissant nature such 15 
children often have. We see him in his youth fascinating 
all men by his beauty, improvising music and songs, 
buying the caged birds and setting them free, as he 
walked the streets of Florence, fond of odd bright dresses 
and spirited horses. 20 

From his earliest years he designed many objects, and 
constructed models in relief, of which Vasari mentions 
some of women smiling. His father, pondering over 
this promise in the child, took him to the workshop of 
Andrea del Verrocchio, then the most famous artist in 25 
Florence. Beautiful objects lay about there — reli- 
quaries, pyxes, silver images for the pope's chapel at 
Rome, strange fancy-work of the middle age, keeping 
odd company with frap;ments of antiquity, then but 
lately discovered. Another student Leonardo may have 30 



344 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

seen there — a boy into whose soul the level light and 
aerial illusions of Italian sunsets had passed, in after 
days famous as Perugino. Verrocchio was an artist of 
the earlier Florentine type, carver, painter, and worker 

5 in metals, in one; designer, not of pictures only, but of 
all things for sacred or household use, drinking-vessels, 
ambries, instruments of music, making them all fair to 
look upon, filling the common ways of life with the re- 
flection of some far-off brightness; and years of patience 

10 had refined his hand till his work was now sought after 
from distant places. 

It happened that Verrocchio was employed by the 
brethren of Vallombrosa to paint the Baptism of Christ, 
and Leonardo was allowed to finish an angel in the left- 

15 hand corner. It was one of those moments in which 
the progress of a great thing — here, that of the art of 
Italy — presses hard and sharp on the happiness of an 
individual, through whose discouragement and decrease, 
humanity, in more fortunate persons, comes a step 

20 nearer to its final success. 

For beneath the cheerful exterior of the mere well- 
paid craftsman, chasing brooches for the copes of Santa 
Maria Novella, or twisting metal screens for the tombs 
of the Medici, lay the ambitious desire of expanding the 

25 destiny of Italian art by a larger knowledge and insight 
into things, a purpose in art not unlike Leonardo's 
still unconscious purpose; and often, in the modeling 
of drapery, or of a lifted arm, or of hair cast back from 
the face there came to him something of the freer man- 

30 ner and richer humanity of a later age. But in this 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 345 

Baptism the pupil had surpassed the master; and Ver- 
rocchio turned away as one stunned, and as if his sweet 
earlier work must thereafter be distasteful to him, from 
the bright animated angel of Leonardo's hand. 

The angel may still be seen in Florence, a space of 5 
sunlight in the cold, labored old picture; but the legend 
is true only in sentiment, for painting had always been 
the art by which Verrocchio set least store. And as in 
a sense he anticipates Leonardo, so to the last Leonardo 
recalls the studio of Verrocchio, in the love of beautiful 10 
toys, such as the vessel of water for a mirror, and lovely 
needlework about the implicated hands in the Modesty 
and Vanity, and of reliefs, like those cameos which in 
the Virgin of the Balances hang all round the girdle of 
Saint Michael, and of bright variegated stones, such as 15 
the agates in the Saint Anne, and in a hieratic precise- 
ness and grace, as of a sanctuary swept and garnished. 
Amid all the cunning and intricacy of his Lombard 
manner this never left him. Much of it there must have 
been in that lost picture of Paradise, which he prepared 20 
as a cartoon for tapestry, to be woven in the looms of 
Flanders. It was the perfection of the older Florentine 
style of miniature painting, with patient putting of each 
leaf upon the trees and each flower in the grass, where 
the first man and woman were standing. 25 

And because it was the perfection of that style, it 
awoke in Leonardo some seed of discontent which lay 
in the secret places of his nature. For the way to per- 
fection is through a series of disgusts; and this picture — 
all that he had done so far in his life at Florence — was 30 



346 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

after all in the old slight manner. His art, if it was to 
be something in the world, must be weighted with more 
of the meaning of nature and purpose of humanity. 
Nature was "the true mistress of higher intelligences." 
5 So he plunged into the study of nature. And in doing 
this he followed the manner of the older students; he 
brooded over the hidden virtues of plants and crystals, 
the lines traced by the stars as they moved in the sky, 
over the correspondences which exist between the dif- 

lo ferent orders of living things, through which, to eyes 
opened, they interpret each other; and for years he seemed 
to those about him as one listening to a voice, silent for 
other men. 

He learned here the art of going deep, of tracking 

15 the sources of expression to their subtlest retreats, the 
power of an intimate presence in the things he handled. 
He did not at once or entirely desert his art; only he 
was no longer the cheerful, objective painter, through 
whose soul, as through clear glass, the bright figures 

20 of Florentine life, only made a little mellower and more 
pensive by the transit, passed on to the white wall. 
He wasted many days in curious tricks of design, seem- 
ing to lose himself in the spinning of intricate devices 
of lines and colors. He was smitten with a love of the 

25 impossible — the perforation of mountains, changing the 
course of rivers, raising great buildings, such as the 
church of San Giovanni, in the air; all those feats for 
the performance of which natural magic professed to 
have the key. Later writers, indeed, see in these efforts 

30 an anticipation of modern mechanics; in him they were 



LEONARBO DA VINCI 347 

rather dreams, thrown off by the overwrought and 
laboring brain. Two ideas were especially fixed in 
him, as reflexes of things that had touched his brain 
in childhood beyond the measure of other impres- 
sions — the smiling of women and the motion of great 5 
waters. 

And in such studies some interfusion of the extremes 
of beauty and terror shaped itself, as an image that 
might be seen and touched, in the mind of this gracious 
youth, so fixed that for the rest of his life it never left 10 
him; and as catching glimpses of it in the strange eyes 
or hair of chance people, he would follow such about the 
streets of Florence till the sun went down, of whom 
many sketches of his remain. Some of these are full of 
a curious beauty, that remote beauty apprehended only 15 
by those who have sought it carefully; who, starting with 
acknowledged types of beauty, have refined as far upon 
these, as these refine upon the world of common forms. 
But mingled inextricably with this there is an element 
of mockery also; so that, whether in sorrow or scorn, 20 
he caricatures Dante even. Legions of grotesques 
sweep under his hand; for has not nature too her gro- 
tesques — the rent rock, the distorting light of evening 
on lonely roads, the unveiled structure of man in the 
embryo, or the skeleton? 25 

All these swarming fancies unite in the Medusa of the 
Uffizii. Vasari's story of an earlier Medusa, painted 
on a wooden shield, is perhaps an invention; and yet, 
properly told, has more of the air of truth about it than 
anything else in the whole legend. For its real subject 30 



348 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

is not the serious work of a man, but the experiment 
of a child. The Hzards and glowworms and other 
strange small creatures which haunt an Italian vine- 
yard bring before one the whole picture of a child's life 
5 in a Tuscan dwelling — half castle, half farm — and are 
as true to nature as the pretended astonishment of the 
father for whom the boy has prepared a surprise. It 
was not in play that he painted that other Medusa, the 
one great picture which he left behind him in Florence. 

lo The subject has been treated in various ways; Leonardo 
alone cuts to its center; he alone reahzes it as the head 
of a corpse, exercising its powers through all the cir- 
cumstances of death. What may be called the fascina- 
tion of corruption penetrates in every touch its ex- 

15 quisitely finished beauty. About the dainty lines of the 
cheek the bat flits unheeded. The delicate snakes seem 
literally stranghng each other in terrified struggle to 
escape from the Medusa brain. The hue which violent 
death always brings with it is in the features: features 

20 singularly massive and grand, as we catch them in- 
verted, in a dexterous foreshortening, sloping upwards, 
almost sliding down upon us, crown foremost, like a 
great calm stone against which the wave of serpents 
breaks. But it is a subject that may well be left to the 

25 beautiful verses of Shelley. 

The science of that age was all divination, clairvoy- 
ance, unsubjected to our exact modern formulas, seek- 
ing in an instant of vision to concentrate a thousand 
experiences. Later writers, thinking only of the well- 

30 ordered treatise on painting which a Frenchman, Raf- 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 349 

faelle du Fresne, a hundred years afterwards, compiled 
from Leonardo's bewildered manuscripts, written 
strangely, as his manner was, from right to left, have 
imagined a rigid order in his inquiries. But this rigid 
order was little in accordance with the restlessness of 5 
his character; and if we think of him as the mere rea- 
soner who subjects design to anatomy, and composition 
to mathematical rules, we shall hardly have of him that 
impression which those about him received from him. 
Poring over his crucibles, making experiments with 10 
color, trying, by a strange variation" of the alchemist's 
dream, to discover the secret, not of an elixir to make 
man's natural life immortal, but rather of giving immor- 
tality to the subtlest and most delicate effects of painting, 
he seemed to them rather the sorcerer or the magician, 15 
possessed of curious secrets and a hidden knowledge, 
living in a world of which he alone possessed the key. 
What his philosophy seems to have been most like is 
that of Paracelsus or Cardan; and much of the spirit of 
the older alchemy still hangs about it, with its confidence 20 
in short cuts and odd byways to knowledge. To him 
philosophy was to be something giving strange swiftness 
and double sight, divining the sources of springs be- 
neath the earth or of expression beneath the human 
countenance, clairvoyant of occult gifts in common or 25 
uncommon things, in the reed at the brookside, or the 
star which draws near to us but once in a century. How, 
in this way, the clear purpose was overclouded, the fine 
chaser's hand perplexed, we but dimly see; the mystery 
which at no point quite lifts from Leonardo's life is 30 



SSO NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

deepest here. But it is certain that at one period of his 
life he had almost ceased to be an artist. 

The year 1483 — the year of the birth of RafFaelle and 
the thirty-first of Leonardo's life — is fixed as the date 
5 of his visit to Milan by the letter in which he recom- 
mends himself to Ludovico Sforza, and offers to tell 
him, for a price, strange secrets in the art of war. It 
was that Sforza who murdered his young nephew by 
slow poison, yet was so susceptible of religious impres- 

10 sions that he blended mere earthly passions with a sort 
of religious sentimentalism, and who took for his device 
the mulberry tree — symbol, in its long delay and sud- 
den yielding of flowers and fruit together, of a wisdom 
which economizes all forces for an opportunity of sud- 

15 den and sure effect. The fame of Leonardo had gone 
before him, and he was to model a colossal statue 
of Francesco, the first Duke of Milan. As for Leon- 
ardo himself, he came not as an artist at all, or care- 
ful of the fame of one; but as a player on the harp, a 

20 strange harp of silver of his own construction, shaped in 
some curious likeness to a horse's skull. The capricious 
spirit of Ludovico was susceptible also of the charm of 
music, and Leonardo's nature had a kind of spell in it. 
Fascination is always the word descriptive of him. No 

25 portrait of his youth remains; but all tends to make us be- 
Heve that up to this time some charm of voice and aspect, 
strong enough to balance the disadvantage of his birth, 
had played about him. His physical strength was great; 
it was said that he could bend a horseshoe like a coil of 

30 lead. 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 35 1 

The Duomo, the work of artists from beyond the Alps, 
so fantastic to the eye of a Florentine used to the mellow, 
unbroken surfaces of Giotto and Arnolfo, was then in all 
its freshness; and below, in the streets of Milan, moved a 
people as fantastic, changeful, and dreamlike. To Leon- 5 
ardo least of all men could there be anything poisonous 
in the exotic flowers of sentiment which grew there. It 
was a life of brilliant sins and exquisite amusements. 
Leonardo became a celebrated designer of pageants : and 
it suited the quality of his genius, composed in almost 10 
equal parts of curiosity and the desire of beauty, to take 
things as they came. 

Curiosity and the desire of beauty — these are the two 
elementary forces in Leonardo's genius; curiosity often 
in conflict with the desire of beauty, but generating, in 15 
union with it, a type of subtle and curious grace. 

The movement of the fifteenth century was twofold: 
partly the Renaissance, partly also the coming of what 
is called the "modern spirit," with its realism, its appeal 
to experience : it comprehended a return to antiquity, and 20 
a return to nature. Raffaelle represents the return to 
antiquity, and Leonardo the return to nature. In this 
return to nature, he was seeking to satisfy a boundless 
curiosity by her perpetual surprises, a microscopic sense 
of finish by her finesse, or delicacy of operation, that 25 
suhtilitas naturae which Bacon notices. So we find him 
often in intimate relations with men of science, — with 
Fra Luca Paccioli the mathematician, and the anato- 
mist Marc Antonio della Torre. His observations and 
experiments fill thirteen volumes of manuscript; and 30 



352 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

those who can judge describe him as anticipating long 
before, by rapid intuition, the later ideas of science. 
He explained the obscure light of the unilluminated part 
of the moon, knew that the sea had once covered the 
5 mountains which contain shells, and the gathering of 
the equatorial waters above the polar. 

He who thus penetrated into the most secret parts of 
nature preferred always the more to the less remote, 
what, seeming exceptional, was an instance of law more 

10 refined, the construction about things of a pecuHar at- 
mosphere and mixed Hghts. He paints flowers with such 
curious felicity that different writers have attributed 
to him a fondness for particular flowers, as Clement the 
cyclamen, and Rio the jasmin; while, at Venice, there 

15 is a stray leaf from his portfoHo dotted all over with 
studies of violets and the wild rose. In him first appears 
the taste for what is bizarre or recherche in landscapes; 
hollow places full of the green shadow of bituminous 
rocks, ridged reefs of trap rock which cut the water into 

20 quaint sheets of light — their exact antitype is in our own 
western seas; all the solemn effects of moving water; 
you may follow it springing from its distant source 
among the rocks on the heath of the Madonna of the 
Balances^ passing, as a little fall, into the treacherous calm 

25 of the Madonna of the Lake, next, as a goodly river, 
below the cliffs of the Madonna of the Rocks, washing 
the white walls of its distant villages, stealing out in a 
network of divided streams in La Gioconda to the sea- 
shore of the Saint Anne — that delicate place, where the 

30 wind passes like the hand of some fine etcher over the 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 353 

surface, and the untorn shells are lying thick upon the 
sand, and the tops of the rocks, to which the waves 
never rise, are green with grass, grown fine as hair. It is 
the landscape, not of dreams or of fancy, but of places 
far withdrawn, and hours selected from a thousand with 5 
a miracle of finesse. Through Leonardo's strange veil of 
sight things reach him so; in no ordinary night or day, but 
as in faint light of eclipse, or in some brief interval of 
falling rain at daybreak, or through deep water. 

And not into nature only; but he plunged also into 10 
human personality, and became above all a painter of 
portraits; faces of a modeling more skillful than has been 
seen before or since, embodied with a reality which 
almost amounts to illusion, on dark air. To take a char- 
acter as it was, and delicately sound its stops, suited one 15 
so curious in observation, curious in invention. So he 
painted the portraits of Ludovico's mistresses, Lucretia 
Crivelli and Cecilia Galerani the poetess, of Ludovico 
himself, and the Duchess Beatrice. The portrait of 
Cecilia Galerani is lost, but that of Lucretia Crivelli 20 
has been identified with La Belle Feroniere of the Louvre, 
and Ludovico's pale, anxious face still remains in the 
Ambrosian library. Opposite is the portrait of Beatrice 
d'Este, in whom Leonardo seems to have caught some 
presentiment of early death, painting her precise and 25 
grave, full of the refinement of the dead, in sad 
earth-colored raiment, set with pale stones. 

Sometimes this curiosity came in conflict with the 
desire of beauty; it tended to make him go too far be- 
low that outside of things in which art begins and ends. 30 
Prose — 23 



354 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

This struggle between the reason and its ideas, and the 
senses, the desire of beauty, is the key to Leonardo's 
life at Milan — his restlessness, his endless retouchings, 
his odd experiments with color. How much must he 
5 leave unfinished, how much recommence! His problem 
was the transmutation of ideas into images. What he 
had attained so far had been the mastery of that earlier 
Florentine style, with its naive and limited sensuousness. 
Now he was to entertain in this narrow medium those 

10 divinations of a humanity too wide for it, that larger 
vision of the opening world, which is only not too much 
for the great, irregular art of Shakespeare; and every- 
where the effort is visible in the work of his hands. This 
agitation, this perpetual delay, give him an air of weari- 

1$ ness and ennui. To others he seems to be aiming at an 
impossible effect, to do something that art, that paint- 
ing, can never do. Often the expression of physical 
beauty at this or that point seems strained and marred 
in the effort, as in those heavy German foreheads — too 

20 German and heavy for perfect beauty. 

For there was a touch of Germany in that genius 
which, as Goethe said, had "thought itself weary" — 
milde sich gedacht. What an anticipation of modern Ger- 
many, for instance, in that debate on the question whether 

25 sculpture or painting is the nobler art.^ But there is 
this difference between him and the German, that, with 
all that curious science, the German would have thought 
nothing more was needed; and the name of Goethe him- 

1 How princely, how characteristic of Leonardo, the answer, 
30 Quanta piu, un! arte porta seco fatica di corpo, tanio piu <? vile I 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 355 

self reminds one how great for the artist may be the 
danger of over-much science; how Goethe, who, in the 
Elective Affinities and the first part of Faust, does trans- 
mute ideas into images, who wrought many such trans- 
mutations, did not invariably find the spell-word, and 5 
in the second part of Faust presents us with a mass of 
science which has almost no artistic character at all. But 
Leonardo will never work till the happy moment comes— 
that moment of hien-^tre, which to imaginative men is 
a moment of invention. On this moment he waits; 10 
other moments are but a preparation, or aftertaste of 
it. Few men distinguish between them as jealously as 
he did. Hence, so many flaws even in the choicest work. 
But for Leonardo the distinction is absolute, and, in 
the moment of hien-elre, the alchemy complete: the idea 15 
is stricken into color and imagery: a cloudy mysticism 
is refined to a subdued and graceful mystery, and paint- 
ing pleases the eye while it satisfies the soul. 

This curious beauty is seen above all in his drawings, 
and in these chiefly in the abstract grace of the bounding 20 
lines. Let us take some of these drawings, and pause 
over them awhile; and, first, one of those at Florence — 
the heads of a woman and a httle child, set side by side, 
but each in its own separate frame. First of all, there 
is much pathos in the reappearance in the fuller curves 25 
of the face of the child, of the sharper, more chastened 
lines of the worn and older face, which leaves no doubt 
that the heads are those of a little child and its mother, 
A feeling for maternity is indeed always characteristic 
of Leonardo; and this feehng is further indicated here 30 



356 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

by the half -humorous pathos of the diminutive, rounded 
shoulders of the child. You may note a Hke pathetic 
power in drawings of a young man seated in a stooping 
posture, his face in his hands, as in sorrow; of a slave 

5 sitting in an uneasy inclined posture, in some brief inter- 
val of rest; of a small Madonna and Child, peeping side- 
ways in half-reassured terror, as a mighty griffin with 
bat-like wings, one of Leonardo's finest inventions, de- 
scends suddenly from the air to snatch up a lion wander- 

10 ing near them. But note in these, as that which espec- 
ially belongs to art, the contour of the young man's hair, 
the poise of the slave's arm above his head, and the curves 
of the head of the child, following the little skull wuthin, 
thin and fine as some seashell worn by the wind. 

15 Take again another head, still more full of sentiment, 
but of a different kind, a little drawing in red chalk which 
every one remembers who has examined at all carefully 
the drawings by old masters at the Louvre. It is a face of 
doubtful sex, set in the shadow of its own hair, the cheek- 

20 Hne in high light against it, with something voluptuous 
and full in the eyelids and the Hps. Another drawing 
might pass for the same face in childhood, with parched 
and feverish lips, but with much sweetness in the loose, 
short-waisted childish dress, with necklace and bulla, and 

25 in the daintily bound hair. We might take the thread of 
suggestion which these two drawings offer, when thus set 
side by side, and, following it through the drawings at 
Florence, Venice, and Milan, construct a sort of series, 
illustrating better than anything else Leonardo's type of 

30 womanly beauty. Daughters of Herodias, with their fan- 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 357 

tastic headdresses knotted and folded so strangely to 
leave the dainty oval of the face disengaged, they are not 
of the Christian family, or of Raffaelle's. They are the 
clairvoyants, through whom, as through delicate instru- 
ments, one becomes aware of the subtler forces of nature, 5 
and the modes of their action, all that is magnetic in it, all 
those finer conditions wherein material things rise to that 
subtlety of operation which constitutes them spiritual, 
where only the finer nerve and the keener touch can 
follow: it is as if in certain revealing instances we actually 10 
saw them at their work on human flesh. Nervous, 
electric, faint always with some inexplicable faintness, 
they seem to be subject to exceptional conditions, to 
feel powers at work in the common air unfelt by others, 
to become, as it were, receptacles of them, and pass 15 
them on to us in a chain of secret influences. 

But among the more youthful heads Uiere is one at 
Florence which Love chooses for its own^ — the head of 
a young man, which may well be the likeness of Andrea 
Salaino, beloved of Leonardo for his curled and waving 20 
hair — belli capelli ricci e inanellati — and afterwards his 
favorite pupil and servant. Of all the interests in 
living men and women which may have filled his life at 
Milan, this attachment alone is recorded; and in return 
Salaino identified himself so entirely with Leonardo, that 25 
the picture of Saint Anne, in the Louvre, has been at- 
tributed to him. It illustrates Leonardo's usual choice 
of pupils, men of some natural charm of person or inter- 
course like Salaino, or men of birth and princely habits 
of life like Francesco Melzi — men with just enough 30 



358 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

genius to be capable of initiation into his secret, for the 
sake of which they were ready to efface their own in- 
dividuahty. Among them, retiring often to the villa of 
the Melzi at Canonica al Vaprio, he worked at his fugi- 
5 tive manuscripts and sketches, working for the present 
hour, and for a few only, perhaps chiefly for himself. 
Other artists have been as careless of present or future 
applause, in self-forgetfulness, or because they set moral 
or political ends above the ends of art; but in him this sol- 

10 itary culture of beauty seems to have hung upon a kind of 
self-love, and a carelessness in the work of art of all but 
art itself. Out of the secret places of a unique tempera- 
ment he brought strange blossoms and fruits hitherto 
unknown; and for him, the novel impression conveyed, 

15 the exquisite effect woven, counted as an end in itself — a 
perfect end. 

And these pupils of his acquired his manner so thor- 
oughly, that though the number of Leonardo's authentic 
works is very small indeed, there is a multitude of other 

20 men's pictures through which we undoubtedly see him, 
and come very near to his genius. Sometimes, as in the 
little picture of the Madonna of the Balances, in which, 
from the bosom of His mother, Christ weighs the pebbles 
of the brook against the sins of men, we have a hand, 

25 rough enough by contrast, working upon some fine hint 
or sketch of his. Sometimes, as in the subjects of the 
Daughter of Herodias and the Head of John the Baptist^ 
the lost originals have been reechoed and varied upon 
again and again by Luini and others. At other times the 

30 original remains, but has been a mere theme or motive, a 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 359 

type of which the accessories might be modified or 
changed; and these variations have but brought out the 
more the purpose, or expression of the original. It is so 
with the so-called Saint John the Baptist of the Louvre — 
one of the few naked figures Leonardo painted — whose 5 
delicate brown flesh and woman's hair no one would go 
out into the wilderness to seek, and whose treacherous 
smile v/ould have us understand something far beyond the 
outward gesture or circumstance. But the long, reedlike 
cross in the hand, which suggests Saint John the Baptist, 10 
becomes faint in a copy at the Ambrosian Library and 
disappears altogether in another, in the Palazzo Rosso at 
Genoa. Returning from the last to the original, we are 
no longer surprised by Saint John's strange likeness to 
the Bacchus which hangs near it, which set Theophile 15 
Gautier thinking of Heine's notion of decayed gods, who, 
to maintain themselves, after the fall of paganism, took 
employment in the new religion. We recognize one of 
those symbolical inventions in which the ostensible sub- 
ject is used, not as matter for definite pictorial realization, 20 
but as the starting-point of a train of sentiment, as subtle 
and vague as a piece of music. No one ever ruled over 
his subject more entirely than Leonardo, or bent it more 
dexterously to purely artistic ends. And so it comes to 
pass that though he handles sacred subjects continually, 25 
he is the most profane of painters; the given person or 
subject, Saint John in the Desert, or the Virgin on the 
knees of Saint Anne, is often merely the pretext for a kind 
of work which carries one quite out of the range of its 
conventional associations. 30 



360 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

About the Last Supper^ its decay and restorations, a 
whole hterature has risen up, Goethe's pensive sketch of 
its sad fortunes being far the best. The death in child- 
birth of the Duchess Beatrice was followed in Ludovico 
5 by one of those paroxysms of religious feeling which in 
him were constitutional. The low, gloomy Dominican 
church of Saint Mary of the Graces had been the favorite 
shrine of Beatrice. She had spent her last days there, 
full of sinister presentiments; at last it had been almost 

10 necessary to remove her from it by force; and now it was 
"here that mass was said a hundred times a day for her re- 
pose. On the damp wall of the refectory, oozing with 
mineral salts, Leonardo painted the Last Supper. A hun- 
dred anecdotes were told about it, his retouchings and 

15 delays. They show him refusing to work except at the 
moment of invention, scornful of whoever thought that 
art was a work of mere industry and rule, often coming 
the whole length of Milan to give a single touch. He 
painted it, not in fresco, where all must be impromptu, 

20 but in oils, the new method which he had been one of the 
first to welcome, because it allowed of so many after- 
thoughts, so refined a working out of perfection. It 
turned out that on a plastered wall no process could have 
been less durable. Within fifty years it had fallen into 

25 decay. And now we have to turn back to Leonardo's own 
studies, above all to one drawing of the central head at 
the Brera, which, in a union of tenderness and severity in 
the face lines, reminds one of the monumental work of 
Mino da Fiesole, to trace it as it was. 

30 It was another effort to lift a given subject out of the 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 36 1 

range of its conventional associations. Strange, after 
all the misrepresentations of the middle age, was the 
effort to see it, not as the pale Host of the altar, but as one 
taking leave of his friends. Five years afterwards 
the young Raffaelle, at Florence, painted it with sweet 5 
and solemn effect in the refectory of Saint Onofrio; but 
still with all the mystical unreahty of the school of 
Perugino. Vasari pretends that the central head was 
never finished; but finished or unfinished, or owing 
part of its effect to a mellowing decay, this central head 10 
does but consummate the sentiment of the whole com- 
pany — ghosts through which you see the wall, faint as 
the shadows of the leaves upon the wall on autumn 
afternoons: this figure is but the faintest, most spectral 
of them all. It is the image of what the history it sym- 15 
boHzes has more and more become for the world, paler 
and paler as it recedes into the distance. Criticism came 
with its appeal from mystical unrealities to originals, and 
restored no lifelike reality but these transparent shadows, 
spirits which have not flesh and bones. 20 

The Last Supper was finished in 1497; in 1498 the 
French entered Milan, and whether or not the Gascon 
bowman used it as a mark for their arrows, the model of 
Francesco Sforza certainly did not survive. What, in 
that age, such work was capable of being — of what nobil- 25 
ity, amid what racy truthfulness to fact — we may judge 
from the bronze statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni on horse- 
back, modeled by Leonardo's master, Verrocchio (he 
died of grief, it was said, because, the mold accidentally 
faihng, he was unable himself to complete it), still stand- 30 



362 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

ing in the piazza of Saint John and Saint Paul at Venice. 
Some traces of the thing may remain in certain of Leon- 
ardo's drawings, and also, perhaps, by a singular circum- 
stance, in a far-off town of France, For Ludovico 
5 became a prisoner, and ended his days at Loches in 
Touraine; — ^allowed at last, it is said, to breathe fresher 
air for awhile in one of the rooms of a high tower there, 
after many years of captivity in the dungeons below, 
where all seems sick with barbarous feudal memories, and 

10 where his prison is still shown, its walls covered with 
strange painted arabesques, ascribed by tradition to his 
hand, amused a httle, in this way, through the tedious 
years; — vast helmets and faces and pieces of armor, 
among which, in great letters, the motto Injelix Sinn is 

15 woven in and out, and in which, perhaps, it is not too 
fanciful to see the fruit of a wistful after-dreaming over 
all those experiments with Leonardo on the armed figure 
of the great duke, that had occupied the two so often 
during the days of his good fortune at Milan. 

20 The remaining years of Leonardo's life are more or less 
years of wandering. From his brilliant life at court he had 
saved nothing, and he returned to Florence a poor man. 
Perhaps necessity kept his spirit excited: the next four 
years are one prolonged rapture or ecstasy of invention. 

25 He painted the pictures of the Louvre, his most authentic 

works, which came there straight from the cabinet of 

Francis the First, at Fontainebleau. One picture of his, 

the Saint Anne — ^not the Saint Anne of the Lou\Te, but 

^ a mere cartoon, now in London — ^revived for a moment 

30 a sort of appreciation more common in an earlier time, 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 363 

when good pictures had still seemed miraculous; and for 
two days a crowd of people of all qualities passed in naive 
excitement through the chamber where it hung, and gave 
Leonardo a taste of Cimabue's triumph. But his work 
was less with the saints than with the living women of 5 
Florence; for he hved still in the polished society that he 
loved, and in the houses of Florence, left perhaps a little 
subject to light thoughts by the death of Savonarola — 
the latest gossip (1869) is of an undraped Monna Lisa, 
found in some out-of-the-way corner of the late Orleans 10 
collection — he saw Ginevra di Benci, and Lisa, the 
young third wife of Francesco del Giocondo. As we 
have seen him using incidents of sacred story not for 
their own sake, or as mere subjects for pictorial reali- 
zation, but as a symbolical language for fancies all his 15 
own, so now he found a vent for his thoughts in taking 
one of these languid women, and raising her, as Leda 
or Pomona, Modesty or Vanity, to the seventh heaven 
of symbolical expression. 

La Gioconda is, in the truest sense, Leonardo's 20 
masterpiece, the revealing instance of his mode of 
thought and work. In suggestiveness, only the Melan- 
cholia of Diirer is comparable to it; and no crude sym- 
boHsm disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful 
mystery. We all know the face and hands of the figure, 25 
set in its marble chair, in that cirque of fantastic rocks, 
as in some faint light under sea. Perhaps of all ancient 
pictures time has chilled it least. ^ As often happens 

1 Yet for Vasari there was some further magic of crimson in 
the lips and cheeks, lost for us. 30 



364 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

with works in which invention seems to reach its Hmit, 
there is an element in it given to, not invented by, the 
master. In that inestimable folio of drawings, once in 
the possession of Vasari, were certain designs by Ver- 
5 rocchio, faces of such impressive beauty that Leonardo 
in his boyhood copied them many times. It is hard 
not to connect with these designs of the elder, by-past 
master, as with its germinal principle, the unfathom- 
able smile, always with a touch of something sinister 

10 in it, which plays over all Leonardo's work. Besides, 
the picture is a portrait. From childhood we see this 
image defining itself on the fabric of his dreams; and 
but for express historical testimony, we might fancy 
that this was but his ideal lady, embodied and beheld 

15 at last. What was the relationship of a living Floren- 
tine to this creature of his thought? By means of 
what strange affinities had the person and the dream 
grown up thus apart, and yet so closely together ? Pres- 
ent from the first incorporeally in Leonardo's thought, 

20 dimly traced in the designs of Verrocchio, she is found 
present at last in // Giocondo^s house. That there is 
much of mere portraiture in the picture is attested by the 
legend that by artificial means, the presence of mimes 
and flute players, that subtle expression was protracted 

25 on the face. Again, was it in four years and by 
renewed labor never really completed, or in four 
months and as by stroke of magic, that the image was 
projected ? 

The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the 

30 waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 365 

years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon 
which all " the ends of the world are come," and the eye- 
lids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from 
within upon the flesh, the deposit, litde cell by cell, of 
strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite 5 
passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those 
white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, 
and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into 
which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All 
the thoughts and experience of the world have etched 10 
and molded there, in that which they have of power 
to refine and make expressive the outward form, the 
animaHsm of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of 
the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imagi- 
native loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of 15 
the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which 
she sits; Hke the vampire, she has been dead many 
times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has 
been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day 
about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern 20 
merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of 
Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all 
this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, 
and lives only in the delicacy with which it has molded 
the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the 25 
hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping to- 
gether ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and 
modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity 
as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all 
modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might 30 



366 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol 
of the modern idea. 

During these years at Florence Leonardo's history 
is the history of his art; he himself is lost in the bright 
5 cloud of it. The outward history begins again in 1502, 
with a wild journey through central Italy, which he 
makes as the chief engineer of Caesar Borgia. The 
biographer, putting together the stray jottings of his 
manuscripts, may follow him through every day of it, 

10 up the strange tower of Siena, which looks towards 
Rome, elastic like a bent bow, down to the seashore at 
Piombino, each place appearing as fitfully as in a fever 
dream. 

One other great work was left for him to do, a work 

15 all trace of which soon vanished. The Battle of the Stand- 
ard, in which he had Michelangelo for his rival. The 
citizens of Florence, desiring to decorate the walls of 
the great council chamber, had offered the work for 
competition, and any subject might be chosen from the 

20 Florentine wars of the fifteenth century. Michelangelo 
chose for his cartoon an incident of the war with Pisa, 
in which the Florentine soldiers, bathing in the Arno, 
are surprised by the sound of trumpets, and run to arms. 
His design has reached us only in an old engraving, 

25 which perhaps helps us less than what we remember 
of the background of his Holy Family in the Uffizii 
to imagine in what superhuman form, such as might 
have beguiled the heart of an earlier world, those figures 
may have risen from the water, Leonardo chose an 

30 incident from the battle of Anghiari, in which two par- 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 367 

ties of soldiers fight for a standard. Like Michelangelo's, 
his cartoon is lost, and has come to us only in sketches, 
and in a fragment of Rubens. Through the accounts 
given we may discern some lust of terrible things in it, 
so that even the horses tore each other with their teeth; 5 
and yet one fragment of it, in a drawing of his at Florence, 
is far different — a waving field of lovely armour, the 
chased edgings running like lines of sunlight from side 
to side. Michelangelo was twenty-seven years old; 
Leonardo more than fifty; and Raffaelle, then nineteen 10 
years old, visiting Florence for the first time, came and 
watched them as they w^orked. 

We catch a ghmpse of him again, at Rome in 15 14, 
surrounded by his mirrors and vials and furnaces, making 
strange toys that seemed alive of wax and quicksilver. 15 
The hesitation which had haunted him all through life, 
and made him like one under a spell, was upon him now 
with double force. No one had ever carried political 
indifferentism farther; it had always been his philosophy 
to "fly before the storm;" he is for the Sforzas, or 20 
against them, as the tide of their fortune turns. Yet now 
in the political society of Rome, he came to be suspected 
of concealed French sympathies. It paralyzed him to 
find himself among enemies; and he turned wholly to 
France, which had long courted him. 25 

France was about to become an Italy more Italian 
than Italy itself. Francis the First, like Lewis the 
Twelfth before him, was attracted by the finesse of 
Leonardo's work; La Gioconda was already in his cabi- 
net, and he offered Leonardo the little Chateau de Clou, 30 



368 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSK 

with its vineyards and meadows, in the pleasant valley 
of the Masse, just outside the walls of the town of Am- 
boise, where, especially in the hunting season, the court 
then frequently resided. A Monsieur Lyonard, peinieur 
5 du Roy pour Aniboyse — so the letter of Francis the First 
is headed. It opens a prospect, one of the most interest- 
ing in the history of art, where, under a strange mixture 
of lights, Italian art dies away as a French exotic. 

Two questions remain, after much busy antiquarian- 

10 ism, concerning Leonardo's death — the question of the 
precise form of his religion, and the question whether 
Francis the First was present at the time. They are of 
about equally Httle importance in the estimate of Leon- 
ardo's genius. The directions in his will about the thirty 

15 masses and the great candles for the church of Saint Flor- 
entin are things of course, their real purpose being im- 
mediate and practical; and on no theory of religion could 
these hurried offices be of much consequence. We for- 
get them in speculating how one who had been always so 

20 desirous of beauty, but desired it always in such definite 
and precise forms, as hands or flowers or hair, looked 
forward now into the vague land, and experienced the 
last curiosity. 



LESLIE STEPHEN 

[Sir Leslie Stephen was born in London in 1832. He was edu- 
cated at Eton, at King's College, London, and at Trinity Hall, Cam- 
bridge, where he was graduated in 1854 and where he remained as 
fellow and tutor until 1864. In that year he went to London to en- 
gage in literature. His Sketches from Cambridge was published in 
1865. He became editor of the Corjihill Magazine in 187 1 and had 
Stevenson, Hardy, and Henry James among its contributors. In 
1882 he gave up this position to become editor of the Dictionary of 
Natiojial Biography, a work which he was obliged from ill health 
to turn over to Mr. Sidney Lee in 1891. He was knighted in 
1902. Besides his interest in biography and literature Stephen 
was a keen student of philosophy and ethics. He died in 1904. 
His principal works are : Hours in a Library (three series, 1874— 
76-79) ; History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century 
(1876), new edition (1902) ; The Science of Ethics (1882) ; Life 
of Henry Fawcett (1885) ; An Agnostic's Apology (1893) ; Life of 
Sir fames Fitzjatnes Stephen (1895); Social Rights and Duties 
(1896) ; Studies of a Biographer (4 vols., 1898-1902) ; The English 
Utilitarians (1900) ; and in the " English Men of Letters Series," 
lives of Swift, Pope, Johnson, Hobbes, and George Eliot.] 

Few English literary critics have so many uniformly 
sane and solid essays to their credit as Leslie Stephen. 
Not one of the papers in the two series, Hours in a 
Library and Studies of a Biographer, is unworthy of 
the distinguished lover of letters whose "tenderness 
for whatever is high-minded and sincere" was so aptly 
praised by Lowell. The present essay, besides be- 
ing representative of Stephen's judicial and yet indi- 
vidual attitude in criticism, has the added interest of 
Prose — 24 369 



370 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

being a reply to Carlyle's famous attack upon one 
of the most delightful men of literature, — Sir Walter 
Scott. 

In general structure the essay suggests the free, 
flowing talk of a cultivated person who has something 
to say and says it unhesitatingly, but who does not 
trouble himself or his readers over rigid logical links 
and boundaries. Phases of the subject, once you are 
upon the full stream of his discussion, seem of their 
own accord to flow in and enlarge the current. But 
there is direction, for Stephen was a careful thinker, 
who hated shallowness, sham, and idle vaporing, and 
who always left upon his readers an impression at once 
definite and substantial. 

The author begins with the question of Scott's fame. 
After the glare of novelty has worn off, will there remain 
a basis of true metal? Stephen approaches the answer 
to his inquiry through an examination of Carlyle's 
judgment on Scott, which he states with exactness and 
candor. Carlyle's judgment, he thinks is "harsher 
than necessary." Shakespeare wrote for money, and 
the stimulus of money to a richly-stored brain is jus- 
tifiable; and though Scott, hke Shakespeare, wrote in 
haste, he came to his literary labors only after long 
preparation. But Stephen concurs in Carlyle's opin- 
ion that Scott does not arouse the deeper passions, 
"fails in pure passion of all kinds," makes "wooden 
blocks of his heroes, and fashions real characters only 
out of his peasants." Then dismissing Carlyle, Ste- 
phen speaks independently. Ivanhoe, if not for men, 
ought to be "delightful for boys." And Scott should 
be credited with the help he gave to the spread of a 
"genuine historical spirit." His greatness, indeed, lives 
in his "mode of connecting past and present;" and 
his best tales are just far enough from us to have ac- 
quired a " picturesque coloring." These best tales finally 



LESLIE STEPHEN 37 1 

will endure, — the critic hopes, — because of the manly, 
lovable nature that shines through them. 

The spirit and method of the essay fairly reflect 
Stephen's serious critical attitude. "I like books 
with a moral," he says. "The fact is, I take it, that 
poetry in a mind of great natural power, not only may 
be, but cannot help being, philosophy." He seeks the 
heart of a book or writer, the view of Hfe, the teaching; 
and his judgment is apt to be high or low according to 
his respect for the writer's contribution to the solution 
of life's enigmas. His method of approach is scien- 
tific. "After all," he says, "though criticism cannot 
boast of being a science, it ought to aim at something 
like a scientific spirit, or at least to proceed in a scien- 
tific spirit." With a jaunty, impressionistic criticism 
Stephen had no sympathy. He strove for " logical sym- 
metry," for unity and solidarity of view; he tried to 
make his estimates accord with reason and common 
sense. But he did not aim or profess to be oracular, 
as Arnold sometimes did, nor to anticipate the judg- 
ment of posterity. Though Stephen had a detached 
manner, he never professed to eliminate himself from 
his criticism. In truth, the charm of his best essays 
consists in the alternation of the judicial and the per- 
sonal tone. "Now I confess," he says, "that to me 
one main interest in reading is always communion 
with the author." 

The critical and the individual temper of Stephen 
is admirably shown in his treatment of Scott. He 
wishes to be fair, and he is neither a zealous worshiper 
nor a cynical unbeliever. While correcting the harsh- 
ness of Carlyle's dictum, and while frankly calling 
Scott "the most perfectly delightful of story-tellers," 
he refuses to see in him one of the supremely great 
writers. Nevertheless, he cannot forget the Scott of 
his boyhood and he descends from his critical dignity 



372 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

to say a good word for Ivanhoe. The personality that 
lives in Scott's best books Stephen loves too much to 
doubt the enduringness of the medium that transmits it. 
The style of LesHe Stephen is not conspicuously in- 
dividual nor can he rank as a stylist in the narrow sense. 
"To acquire a good style," he says, "you should never 
think of style at all." His writing is not brilliant; its 
phrases are not fashioned to catch the eye or the ear. 
With him, as with Huxley, " the ' flashes' must be finished 
and concentrated. The happy phrase has to be fixed in 
the general framework." But if external effects are 
wanting, the style is really notable for its solidity, its 
sanity, its admirable mastery of material that is worthy. 
It discloses a man of strong mental powers, intent upon 
his subject and wasting no word or phrase for super- 
fluous ornament. It is a style that bears upon its 
surface the impress of an attractive personality, serious 
and humorous by turns, ironical, even cynical, and yet 
most dehghtfully human. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 

The question has begun to be asked about Scott 
which is asked about every great man: whether he is 
still read or still read as he ought to be read. I have 
been glad to see in some statistics of popular literature 

5 that the Waverley Novels are still among the books 
most frequently bought at railway stations, and scarcely 
surpassed even by Pickwick or David Copperfield. A 
writer, it is said, is entitled to be called a classic when 
his books have been read for a century after his death. 

lo The number of books which fairly satisfies that con- 
dition is remarkably small. There are certain books, 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 373 

of course, which we are all bound to read if we make 
any claim to be decently educated. A modern English- 
man cannot afford to confess that he has not read 
Shakespeare or Milton; if he talks about philosophy, 
he must have dipped at least into Bacon and Hobbes 5 
and Locke; if he is a literary critic, he must know some- 
thing of Spenser and Donne and Dryden and the early 
dramatists; but how many books are there of the seven- 
teenth century which are still read for pleasure by other 
than specialists? To speak within bounds, I fancy 10 
that it would be exceedingly difficult to make out a list 
of one hundred English books which after publication 
for a century are still really familiar to the average 
reader. Something hke ninety-nine of those have in 
any case lost the charm of novelty, and are'read, if read 15 
at all, from some vague impression that the reader is 
doing a duty. It takes a very powerful voice and a 
very clear utterance to make a man audible to the fourth 
generation. If something of the mildew of time is steal- 
ing over the Waverley Novels, we must regard that as 20 
all but inevitable. Scott will have succeeded beyond 
any but the very greatest, perhaps even as much as the 
very greatest, if, in the twentieth century, now so un- 
pleasantly near, he has a band of faithful followers, who 
still read because they like to read and not because they 25 
are told to read. Admitting that he must more or less 
undergo the universal fate, that the glory must be 
dimmed even though it be not quenched, we may still ask 
whether he will not retain as much vitahty as the con- 
ditions of humanity permit: Will our posterity under- 30 



374 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

stand at least why he was once a luminary of the first 
magnitude, or wonder at their ancestors' hallucination 
about a mere will-o'-the-wisp? Will some of his best 
performances stand out Hke a cathedral amongst ruined 
5 hovels, or will they all sink into the dust together, and 
the outlines of what once charmed the world be traced 
only by Dryasdust and historians of literature? It is a 
painful task to examine such questions impartially. 
This probing a great reputation, and doubting whether 

10 we can come to anything solid at the bottom, is especially 
painful in regard to Scott. For he has, at least, this 
merit, that he is one of those rare natures for whom we 
feel not merely admiration but affection. We may cher- 
ish the tame of some writers in spite of, not on account 

15 of, many personal defects; if we satisfied ourselves that 
their literary reputations were founded on the sand, we 
might partly console ourselves with the thought that we 
were only depriving bad men of a title to genius. But 
for Scott most men feel in even stronger measure that 

20 kind of warm fraternal regard which Macaulay and 
Thackeray expressed for the amiable, but, perhaps, 
rather cold-blooded, Addison. The manliness and the 
sweetness of the man's nature predispose us to return 
the most favorable verdict in our power. And we may 

25 add that Scott is one of the last great English ™ters 
whose influence extended beyond his island, and gave 
a stimulus to the development of European thought. 
We cannot afford to surrender our faith in one to whom, 
whatever his permanent merits, we must trace so much 

30 that is characteristic of the mind of the nineteenth cen- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 375 

tury. Whilst, finally, if we have any Scotch blood in 
our veins, we must be more or less than men to turn a 
deaf ear to the promptings of patriotism. When Shake- 
speare's fame decays everywhere else, the inhabitants 
of Stratford-on-Avon, if it still exist, should still revere 5 
their tutelary saint; and the old town of Edinburgh 
should tremble in its foundation when a sacrilegious hand 
is laid upon the glory of Scott. 

Let us, however, take courage, and, with such im- 
partiality as we may possess, endeavor to sift the wheat 10 
from the chaff. And, by way of following an able guide, 
let us dwell for a little on the judgment pronounced 
upon Scott by one whose name I would never mention 
without profound respect, and who has a special claim 
to be heard in this case. Carlyle is (I must now say 15 
was) both a man of genius and a Scotchman. His own 
writings show in every line that he comes of the same 
strong Protestant race from which Scott received his 
best qualities. 

" The Scotch national character [says Carlyle himself] originates 20 
in many circumstances. First of all, the Saxon stuff there was to 
work on ; but next, and beyond all else except that, in the Pres- 
byterian gospel of John Knox. It seems a good national char- 
acter, and, on some sides, not so good. Let Scott thank John 
Knox, for he owed him much, little as he dreamed of debt in that 25 
quarter. No Scotchman of his time was more entirely Scotch 
than Walter Scott : the good and the not so good, which all 
Scotchmen inherit, ran through every fiber of him." 

Nothing more true; and the words would be as strik- 
ingly appropriate if for Walter Scott we substitute 30 



376 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Thomas Carlyle. And to this source of sympathy we 
might add others. Who in this generation could rival 
Scott's talent for the picturesque, unless it be Carlyle? 
Who has done so much to apply the lesson which Scott, 
5 as he says, first taught us — that the ''bygone ages of the 
world were actually filled by living men, not by protocols, 
state-papers, controversies, and abstractions of men"? 
If Scott would in old days — I still quote his critic — have 
harried cattle in Tynedale or cracked crowns in Reds- 

lo wire, would not Carlyle have thundered from the pulpit 
of John Knox his own gospel, only in slightly altered 
phraseology — that shams should not live but die, and 
that men should do what work lies nearest to their hands, 
as in the presence of the eternities and the infinite si- 

15 lences? 

The last parallel reminds us that if there are points 
of similarity, there are contrasts both wide and deep. 
The rugged old apostle had probably a very low opinion 
of mosstroopers, and Carlyle has a message to deliver 

20 to his fellow-creatures, which is not quite according to 
Scott. And thus we see throughout his interesting essay 
a kind of struggle between two opposite tendencies — a 
genuine hking for the man, tempered by a sense that 
Scott dealt rather too much in those same shams to pass 

25 muster with a stern moral censor. Nobody can touch 
Scott's character more finely. There is a charming little 
anecdote which every reader must remember: how there 
was a "little Blenheim cocker" of singular sensibihty 
and sagacity; how the said cocker would at times fall into 

30 musings like those of a Wertherean poet, and lived in 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 377 

perpetual fear of strangers, regarding them all as po- 
tentially dog stealers; how the dog was, nevertheless, en- 
dowed with "most amazing moral tact," and especially 
hated the genus quack, and, above all, that of acrid- 
quack. "These," says Carlyle, "though never so clear- s 
starched, bland-smiling, and beneficent, he absolutely 
would have no trade with. Their very sugar-cake was 
unavailing. He said with emphasis, as clearly as bark- 
ing could say it, 'Acrid-quack, avaunt!' " But once 
when "a tall, irregular, busy-looking man came halting 10 
by," that wise, nervous little dog ran towards him, and 
began "fawning, frisking, licking at the feet" of Sir 
Walter Scott. No reader of reviews could have done 
better says Carlyle; and, indeed, that canine testimonial 
was worth having. I prefer that little anecdote even to 15 
Lockhart's account of the pig, which had a romantic 
affection for the author of Waverley. Its relater at least 
perceived and loved that unaffected benevolence, which 
invested even Scott's bodily presence with a kind of nat- 
ural aroma, perceptible, as it would appear, to very far- 20 
away cousins. But Carlyle is on his guard, and though 
his sympathy flows kindly enough, it is rather harshly 
intercepted by his sterner mood. He cannot, indeed, but 
warm to Scott at the end. After touching on the sad 
scene of Scott's closing years, at once ennobled and em- 25 
bittered by that last desperate struggle to clear off the 
burden of debt, he concludes with genuine feeling. 

" It can be said of Scott, when he departed he took a man's life 
along with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put 
together in that eighteenth century of time. Alas, his fine Scotch 30 



378 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

face, with its shaggy honesty, sagacity, and goodness, when we 
saw it latterly on the Edinburgh streets, was all worn with care, 
the joy all fled from it, plowed deep with labor and sorrow. 
We shall never forget it — we shall never see it again. Adieu, 
5 Sir Walter, pride of all Scotchmen ; take our proud and sad 
farewell." 

If even the Waverley Novels should lose their interest, 
the last journals of Scott, recently published by a ju- 
dicious editor, can never lose their interest as the record 

13 of one of the noblest struggles ever carried on by a great 
man to redeem a lamentable error. It is a book to do 
one good. 

And now it is time to turn to the failings which, in 
Carlyle's opinion, mar this pride of all Scotchmen, and 

15 make his permanent reputation doubtful. The faults 
upon which he dwells are, of course, those which are 
more or less acknowledged by all sound critics. Scott, 
says Carlyle, had no great gospel to deliver; he had 
nothing of the martyr about him; he slew no monsters 

20 and stirred no deep emotions. He did not believe in 
anything, and did not even disbelieve in anything: 
he was content to take the world as it came — the false 
and the true mixed indistinguishably together. One 
Ram-dass, a Hindoo, "who set up for god-head lately," 

25 being asked what he meant to do with the sins of man- 
kind, replied that "he had fire enough in his belly to 
burn up all the sins in the world." Ram-dass had 
" some spice of sense in him." Now, of fire of that kind 
we can detect few sparks in Scott. He was a thoroughly 

30 healthy, sound, vigorous Scotchman, with an eye for 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 379 

the main chance, but not much of an eye for the eterni- 
ties. And that unfortunate commercial element, which 
caused the misery of his Hfe, was equally mischievous to 
his work. He cared for no results of his working but such 
as could be seen by the eye, and in one sense or other, 5 
"handled, looked at, and buttoned into the breeches' 
pocket." He regarded literature rather as a trade than 
an art; and literature, unless it is a very poor affair, 
should have higher aims than that of " harmlessly amus- 
ing indolent, languid men." Scott would not afford the 10 
time or the trouble to go to the root of the matter, and 
is content to amuse us with mere contrasts of costume, 
which will lose their interest when the swallowtail is as 
obsolete as the buff coat. And then he fell into the mod- 
ern sin of extempore writing, and deluged the world 15 
with the first hasty overflowings of his mind, instead of 
straining and refining it till he could bestow the pure 
essence upon us. In short, his career is summed up in 
the phrase that it was "writing impromptu novels to 
buy farms with" — a melancholy end, truly, for a man of 20 
rare genius. Nothing is sadder than to hear of such a 
man "writing himself out;" and it is pitiable indeed that 
Scott should be the example of that fate which rises 
most naturally to our minds. 

" Something very perfect in its kind [says Carlyle] might have 25 
come from Scott, nor was it a low kind — nay, who knows how 
high, with studious self-concentration, he might have gone: what 
wealth nature implanted in him, which his circumstances, most 
unkind while seeming to be kindest, had never impelled him to 
unfold ? " 30 



380 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

There is undoubtedly some truth in the severer criti- 
cisms to which some more kindly sentences are a pleasant 
relief; but there is something too which most persons 
will be apt to consider as rather harsher than necessary. 
5 Is not the moral preacher intruding a little too much 
on the province of the literary critic ? In fact we fancy 
that, in the midst of these energetic remarks, Carlyle 
is conscious of certain half-expressed doubts. The name 
of Shakespeare occurs several times in the course of his 

10 remarks, and suggests to us that we can hardly con- 
demn Scott whilst acquitting the greatest name in our 
literature. Scott, it seems, wrote for money; he coined 
his brains into cash to buy farms. Did not Shakespeare 
do pretty much the same? As Carlyle himself puts it, 

15 "beyond drawing audiences to the Globe Theater, 
Shakespeare contemplated no result in those plays of 
his." Shakespeare, as Pope puts it, 

" Whom you and every playhouse bill 
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will, 
20 For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight. 

And grew immortal in his own despite," 

To write for money was long held to be disgraceful; 
and Byron, as we know, taunted Scott because his pub- 
lishers combined 

25 " To yield his muse just half-a-crown per line ; " 

whilst Scott seems half to admit that his conduct required 
justification, and urges that he sacrificed to literature 
very fair chances in his original profession. Many 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 38 1 

people might, perhaps, be disposed to take a bolder line 
of defense. Cut out of English fiction all that which 
has owed its birth more or less to a desire of earning 
money honorably, and the residue would be painfully 
small. The truth, indeed, seems to be simple. No good 5 
work is done when the one impeUing motive is the desire 
of making a little money; but some of the best work 
that has ever been done has been indirectly due to the 
impecuniosity of the laborers. When a man is empty 
he makes a very poor job of it, in straining colorless trash 10 
from his hardbound brains; but when his mind is full 
to bursting he may still require the spur of a moderate 
craving for cash to induce him to take the decisive 
plunge. Scott illustrates both cases. The melancholy 
drudgery of his later years was forced from him in spite 15 
of nature; but nobody ever wrote more spontaneously 
than Scott when he was composing his early poems and 
novels. If the precedent of Shakespeare is good for any- 
thing, it is good for this. Shakespeare, it may be, had 
a more moderate ambition; but there seems to be no 20 
reason why the desire of a good house at Stratford should 
be intrinsically nobler than the desire of a fine estate 
at Abbotsford. But then, it is urged, Scott allowed him- 
self to write with preposterous haste. And Shakespeare, 
who never blotted a line! What is the great difference 25 
between them? Mr. Carlyle feels that here too Scott 
has at least a very good precedent to allege; but he en- 
deavors to establish a distinction. It was right, he says, 
for Shakespeare to write rapidly, "being ready to do it. 
And herein truly lies the secret of the matter; such swift- 30 



382 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

ness of writing, after due energy of preparation, is, 
doubtless, the right method; the hot furnace having 
long worked and simmered, let the pure gold flow out 
at one gush." Could there be a better description of 
5 Scott in his earlier years? He pubUshed his first poem 
of any pretensions at thirty-four, an age which Shelley 
and Keats never reached, and which Byron only passed 
by two years. Waverley came out when he was forty- 
three — most of our modern noveHsts have written them- 

10 selves out long before they arrive at that respectable 
period of Kfe. From a child he had been accumulating 
the knowledge and the thoughts that at last found ex- 
pression in his work. He had been a teller of stories 
before he was well in breeches; and had worked hard 

1 5 till middle life in accumulating vast stores of picturesque 
imagery. The delightful notes to all his books give us 
some impression of the fullness of mind which poured 
forth a boundless torrent of anecdote to the guests at 
Abbotsford. We only repine at the prodigality of the 

20 harvest when we forget the long process of culture by 
which it was produced. And, more than this, when we 
look at the peculiar characteristics of Scott's style — 
that easy flow of narrative never heightening into epi- 
gram, and indeed, to speak the truth, full of slovenly 

25 blunders and amazing grammatical solecisms, but also 
always full of a charm of freshness and fancy most diffi- 
cult to analyze — we may well doubt whether much labor 
would have improved or injured him. No man ever 
depended more on the perfectly spontaneous flow of his 

30 narratives. Carlyle quotes Schiller against him, amongst 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 383 

other and greater names. We need not attempt to com- 
pare the two men; but do not Schiller's tragedies smell 
rather painfully of the lamp? Does not the professor 
of aesthetics pierce a Httle too distinctly through the 
exterior of the poet? And, for one example, are not 5 
Schiller's excellent but remarkably platitudinous peas- 
ants in William Tell miserably colorless alongside of 
Scott's rough border dalesmen, racy of speech, and redo- 
lent of their native soil in every word and gesture? To 
every man his method according to his talent. Scott is 10 
the most perfectly delightful of story-tellers, and it is 
the very essence of story-telling that it should not fol- 
low prescribed canons of criticism, but be as natural 
as the talk by firesides, and it is to be feared, over many 
gallons of whisky toddy, of which it is, in fact, the re- 15 
fined essence. Scott skims off the cream of his varied 
stores of popular tradition and antiquarian learning 
with strange facility; but he had tramped through many 
a long day's march, and pored over innumerable ballads 
and forgotten writers, before he had anything to skim. 20 
Had he not — if we may use the word without offense — 
been cramming all his life, and practicing the art of 
story-telling every day he lived? Probably the most 
striking incidents of his books are in reality mere mod- 
ifications of anecdotes which he had rehearsed a hun- 25 
dred times before, just disguised enough to fit into his 
story. Who can read, for example, the inimitable legend 
of the blind piper in Redgauntlet without seeing that it 
bears all the marks of long elaboration as clearly as one 
of those discourses of Whitfield, which, by constant 30 



384 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

repetition, became marvels of dramatic art? He was 
an impromptu composer, in the sense that when his 
anecdotes once reached paper, they flowed rapidly, and 
were little corrected; but the correction must have been 
5 substantially done in many cases long before they ap- 
peared in the state of "copy." 

Let us, however, pursue the indictment a little further. 
Scott did not beheve in anything in particular. Yet 
once more, did Shakespeare? There is surely a poetry 

10 of doubt as well as a poetry of conviction, or what shall 
we say to Hamlet? Appearing in such an age as the end 
of the last and the beginning of this century, Scott could 
but share the intellectual atmosphere in which he was 
born, and at that day, whatever we may think of this, 

15 few people had any strong faith to boast of. Why should 
not a poet stand aside from the chaos of conflicting 
opinions, so far as he was able to extricate himself from 
the unutterable confusion around them, and show us 
what was beautiful in the world as he saw it, without 

20 striving to combine the office of prophet with his more 
congenial occupation? Carlyle did not mean to urge so 
feeble a criticism as that Scott had no very uncompro- 
mising belief in the Thirty-nine Articles; for that is a 
weakness which he would share with his critic and 

25 with his critic's idol, Goethe. The meaning is partly 
given by another phrase. "While Shakespeare works 
from the heart outwards, Scott," says Carlyle, "works 
from the skin inwards, never getting near the heart of 
men." The books are addressed entirely to the every- 

30 day mind. They have nothing to do with emotions or 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 385 

principles, beyond those of the ordinary country gentle- 
man; and, we may add, of the country gentleman with 
his digestion in good order, and his hereditary gout 
still in the distant future. The more inspiring thoughts, 
the deeper passions, are seldom roused. If in his width 5 
of sympathy, and his vivid perception of character 
within certain limits, he reminds us of Shakespeare, we 
can find no analogy in his writings to the passion of Romeo 
and Juliet, or to the intellectual agony of Hamlet. The 
charge is not really that Scott lacks faith, but that he 10 
never appeals, one way or the other, to the faculties 
which make faith a vital necessity to some natures, or 
lead to a desperate revolt against established faith in 
others. If Byron and Scott could have been combined; 
if the energetic passions of the one could have been 15 
joined to the healthy nature and quick sympathies of 
the other, we might have seen another Shakespeare in 
the nineteenth century. As it is, both of them are 
maimed and imperfect on different sides. It is, in fact, 
remarkable how Scott fails when he attempts a flight 20 
into the regions where he is less at home than in his 
ordinary style. Take, for instance, a passage from 
Roh Roy, where our dear friend, the Bailie, Nicol Jarvie, 
is taken prisoner by Rob Roy's amiable wife, and ap- 
peals to her feelings of kinship: 25 

"*I dinna ken,' said the undaunted Bailie, *if the kindred has 
ever been weel redd out to you yet, cousin — but it's kenned, and 
can be proved. My mother, Elspeth Macfarlane (otherwise Mac- 
gregor), was the wife of my father, Denison Nicol Jarvie (peace, 
be with them baith), and Elspeth was the daughter of Farlane 30 
Prose — 25 



^86 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Macfarlane (or Macgregor), at the shielding of Loch Sloy. Now 
this Farlane Macfarlane (or Macgregor), as his surviving daughter, 
Maggy Macfarlane, virha married Duncan Macnab of Stuckavral- 
lachan, can testify, stood as near to your gudeman, Robin Mac- 

^ gregor, as in the fourth degree of kindred, fur ' 

" The virago lopped the genealogical tree by demanding haught- 
ily if a stream of rushing water acknowleged any relation with the 
portion withdrawn from it for the mean domestic uses of those 
who dwelt on its banks ? " 

lo The Bailie is as real a human being as ever Hved — 
as the present Lord Mayor, or Dandie Dinmont, or 
Sir Walter himself; but Mrs. Macgregor has obviously 
just stepped off the boards of a minor theater, devoted 
to the melodrama. As long as Scott keeps to his strong 

15 ground, his figures are as good flesh and blood as ever 
walked in the Saltmarket of Glasgow; when once he 
tries his heroics, he too often manufactures his charac- 
ters from the materials used by the frequenters of masked 
balls. Yet there are many such occasions on which 

20 his genius does not desert him. Balfour of Burley may- 
rub shoulders against genuine Covenanters and west- 
country Whigs without betraying his fictitious origin. 
The Master of Ravienswood attitudinizes a little too 
much with his Spanish cloak and his slouched hat; 

25 but we feel really sorry for him when he disappears in 
the Kelpie's Flow. And when Scott has to do with hi? 
own peasants, with the thoroughbred Presbyterian 
Scotchman, he can bring intense tragic interest from his 
homely materials. Douce Davie Deans, distracted be- 

30 tween his religious principles and his desire of saving 
his daughter's life, and seeking relief even in the midst 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 387 

of his agonies by that admirable burst of spiritual 
pride: 

" Though I will neither exalt myself nor pull down others, I wish 
that every man and woman in this land had kept the true testi- 
mony and the middle and straight path, as it were on the ridge 5 
of a hill, where wind and water steals, avoiding right-hand snare 
and extremes, and left-hand way-slidings, as well as Johnny Dodds 
of Farthy's acre and ae man mair that shall be nameless — " 

Davie is as admirable a figure as ever appeared in 
fiction. It is a pity that he was mixed up with the con- 10 
ventional madwoman, Madge Wildfire, and that a story 
most touching in its native simplicity was twisted and 
tortured into needless intricacy. The religious exalta- 
tion of Balfour, or the religious pig-headedness of Davie 
Deans, are indeed given from the point of view of the 15 
kindly humorist rather than of one who can fully sym- 
pathize with the sublimity of an intense faith in a homely 
exterior. And though many good judges hold the Bride 
of Lammermoor to be Scott's best performance, in virtue 
of the loftier passions which animate the chief actors 20 
in the tragedy, we are, after all, called upon to sympa- 
thize as much with the gentleman of good family who 
can't ask his friends to dinner without an unworthy de- 
vice to hide his poverty, as with the passionate lover 
whose mistress has her heart broken. In truth, this 25 
criticism as to the absence of high passion reminds us 
again that Scott was a thorough Scotsman, and — for 
it is necessary, even now, to avoid the queer miscon- 
ception which confounds together the most distinct 
races — a thorough Saxon. He belonged, that is, to the 3° 



388 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

race which has in the most eminent degree the typical 
EngHsh quahties. Especially his intellect had a strong 
substratum of downright dogged common sense; his re- 
ligion, one may conjecture, was pretty much that of all 

5 men of sense in his time. It was that of the society 
which had produced and been influenced by Hume and 
Adam Smith; which had dropped its old dogmas with- 
out becoming openly skeptical, but which emphatically 
took "common sense" for the motto of its philosophy. 

10 It was equally afraid of bigotry and skepticism and had 
manufactured a creed out of decent compromises which 
served well enough for ordinary purposes. Even Hume, 
a skeptic in theory, was a Tory and a Scottish patriot in 
poUtics. Scott, who cared nothing for abstract philoso- 

15 phy, did not bother himself to form any definite system 
of opinions; he shared Hume's political prejudices with- 
out inquiring into his philosophy. He thoroughly de- 
tested the dogmatism of the John Knox variety, and 
considered the Episcopal Church to offer the religion 

20 for a gentleman. But his common sense in such matters 
was chiefly shown by not asking awkward questions and 
adopting the creed which was most to his taste without 
committing himself to any strong persuasion as to 
abstract truth. He would, on the whole, leave such mat- 

25 ters alone, an attitude of mind which was not to Car- 
lyle's taste. In the purely artistic direction, this com- 
mon sense is partly responsible for the defect which has 
been so often noticed in Scott's heroes. Your genuine 
Scot is indeed as capable of intense passion as any human 

30 being in the world. Burns is proof enough of the fact 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 389 

if any one doubted it. But Scott was a man of more 
massive and less impulsive character. If he had strong 
passions, they were ruled by his common sense; he kept 
them well in hand, and did not write till the period of 
youthful effervescence was over. His heroes always 5 
seem to be described from the point of view of a man 
old enough to see the folly of youthful passion or too 
old fully to sympathize with it. They are chiefly re- 
markable for a punctilious pride which gives their 
creator some difficulty in keeping them out of super- 10 
fluous duels. When they fall in love they always seem 
to feel themselves as Lovel felt himself in the Antiquary, 
under the eye of Jonathan Oldbuck, who was himself 
once in love but has come to see that he was a fool for 
his pains. Certainly, somehow or other, they are apt 15 
to be terribly wooden. Cranstoun in the Lay of the Last 
Minstrel, Graeme in the Lady of the Lake, or Wilton in 
Marmion, are all unspeakable bores. Waverley himself, 
and Lovel in the Antiquary, and Vanbeest Brown in 
Guy Mannering, and Harry Morton in Old Mortality, 20 
and, in short, the whole series of Scott's pattern young 
men, are all chips of the same block. They can all run, 
and ride, and fight, and make pretty speeches, and ex- 
press the most becoming sentiments; but somehow they 
all partake of one fault, the same which was charged 25 
against the otherwise incomparable horse, namely, that 
they are dead. And we must confess that this is a con- 
siderable drawback from Scott's novels. To take the 
passion out of a novel is something like taking the sun- 
light out of a landscape; and to condemn all the heroes 30 



390 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

to be utterly commonplace is to remove the center of 
interest in a manner detrimental to the best intents of 
the story. When Thackeray endeavored to restore Re- 
becca to her rightful place in Ivanhoe, he was only 
5 doing what is more or less desirable in all the series. 
We long to dismount these insipid creatures from the 
pride of place, and to supplant them by some of the ad- 
mirable characters who are doomed to play subsidiary 
parts. There is, however, another reason for this weak- 

10 ness which seems to be overlooked by many of Scott's 
critics. We are often referred to Scott as a master of 
pure and what is called "objective" story-telHng. Cer- 
tainly I don't deny that Scott could be an admirable 
story-teller: Ivanhoe and the Bride of Lammermoor 

15 would be sufhcient to convict me of error if I did. But 
as mere stories, many of his novels — and moreover his 
masterpieces — are not only faulty, but distinctly bad. 
Taking him purely and simply from that point of view, 
he is very inferior, for example, to Alexandre Dumas. 

20 You cannot follow the thread of most of his narratives 
with any particular interest in the fate of the chief actors. 
In the "Introductory Epistle" prefixed to the Fortunes 
of Nigel, Scott himself gives a very interesting account 
of his method. He has often, he says in answer to an 

25 imaginary critic, begun by laying down a plan of his 
work and tried to construct an ideal story, evolving it- 
self by due degrees and ending by a proper catastrophe. 
But, a demon seats himself on his pen, and leads it 
astray. Characters expand; incidents multiply; the 

30 story lingers while the materials increase; Bailie Jar vie 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 39 1 

or Dugald Dalgetty leads him astray, and he goes many 
a weary mile from the regular road and has to leap hedge 
and ditch to get back. If he resists the temptation, his 
imagination flags and he becomes prosy and dull. No 
one can read his best novels without seeing the truth 5 
of this description. Waverley made an immense success 
as a description of new scenes and social conditions: the 
story of Waverley himself is the least interesting part of 
the book. Everybody who has read Giiy Mannering re- 
members Dandie Dinmont and Meg Merrihes and Pley- 10 
dell and Dominie Sampson; but how many people could 
explain the ostensible story — the love affair of Vanbeest 
Brown and Julia Mannering? We can see how Scott 
put the story together. He was pouring out the most 
vivid and interesting recollections of the borderers whom 15 
he knew so well, of the old Scottish gentry and smugglers 
and peasants, and the old-fashioned lawyers who played 
high jinks in the wynds of Edinburgh. No more de- 
lightful collection of portraits could be brought together. 
But he had to get a story as a thread. He started with 20 
the legend about an astrological prediction told of Dry- 
den and one of his sons, and mixed it up with the An- 
nesley case, where a claimant turned up with more plausi- 
bility than the notorious Orton. This introduced of 
necessity an impossible and conventional bit of love- 25 
making and a recognition of a long-lost heir. He is 
full of long-lost heirs. Equally conventional and im- 
possible stories are introduced in the Antiquary, the 
Heart of Midlothian, and the Legend of Montrose and 
elsewhere. Nobody cares about them, and the charac- 30 



392 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

ters which ostensibly play the chief part serve merely 
to introduce us to the subordinate actors. Waverley, for 
example, gives a description drawn with unsurpassable 
spirit of the state of the Highland clans in 1745; and poor 
5 Waverley 's love affair passes altogether out of sight 
during the greatest and most interesting part of the nar-" 
rative. When Moore said of the poems that Scott in- 
tended to illustrate all the gentlemen's seats between 
Edinburgh and London, he was not altogether wide of 

10 the mark. The novels are all illustrations — not of 
"gentlemen's seats" indeed, but of various social states; 
and it is only by a kind of happy accident when this 
interest in the surroundings does not put the chief char- 
acters out of focus. Nobody has created a greater num- 

15 ber of admirable types, but when we run over their 
names we perceive that in most cases they are the sec- 
ondary performers who are ousting the nominal heroes 
and heroines from their places. Dugald Dalgetty, for 
example, becomes so attractive that he squeezes all the 

20 other actors into a mere corner of the canvas. Perhaps 
nothing more is necessary to explain why Scott failed as 
a dramatist. With him, Hamlet would have been a 
mere peg to show us how Rosencrantz and Guilden- 
stern amused themselves at the royal drinking place. 

25 For this reason, again, Scott bestows an apparently 
disproportionate amount of imagination upon the mere 
scene-painting, the external trappings, the clothes or 
dwelling places of his performers. A traveler into 
a strange country naturally gives us the external pecul- 

30 iarities which strike him. Scott has to tell us what 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 393 

"completed the costume" of his Highland chiefs or 
mediaeval barons. He took, in short, to that "buff- 
jerkin" business of which Carlyle speaks so contemp- 
tuously, and fairly carried away the hearts of his con- 
temporaries by a lavish display of mediaeval upholstery. 5 
Lockhart tells us that Scott could not bear the common- 
place daubings of walls with uniform coats of white, 
blue, and grey. All the roofs at Abbotsford 

" were, in appearance at least, of carved oak, relieved by coats-of- 
arms duly blazoned at the intersections of beams, and resting on 10 
cornices, to tlie eye of the same material, but composed of casts 
in plaster of Paris, after the foliage, the flowers, the grotesque 
monsters and dwarfs, and sometimes the beautiful heads of nuns 
and confessors, on which he had doated from infancy among the 
cloisters of Melrose Abbey." 15 

The plaster looks as well as the carved oak for a time; 
but the day speedily comes when the sham crumbles 
into ashes, and Scott's knights and nobles, Hke his 
carved cornices, became dust in the next generation. It 
is hard to say it, and yet we fear it must be admitted, 20 
that many of those historical novels, which once charmed 
all men, and for which we have still a lingering affection, 
are rapidly converting themselves into mere debris of 
plaster of Paris. Sir F. Palgrave says somewhere that 
"historical novels are mortal enemies to history," and 25 
we are often tempted to add that they are mortal enemies 
to fiction. There may be an exception or two, but as a 
rule the task is simply impracticable. The novelist is 
bound to come so near to the facts that we feel the un- 
reality of his portraits. Either the novel becomes pure 30 



394 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

cram, a dictionary of antiquities dissolved in a thin 
solution of romance, or, which is generally more refresh- 
ing, it takes leave of accuracy altogether and simply 
takes the plot and the costume from history, but allows 
5 us to feel that genuine moderns are masquerading in the 
dress of a bygone century. Even in the last case, 
it generally results in a kind of dance in fetters and a 
comparative breakdown under self-imposed obligations. 
Ivanhoe and Kenilworth and Quentin Diirward, and the 

lo rest are of course audacious anachronisms for the 
genuine historian. Scott was imposed upon by his own 
fancy. He was probably not aware that his Balfour of 
Burley was real flesh and blood, because painted from 
real people round him, while his Claverhouse is made 

15 chiefly of plumes and jackboots. Scott is chiefly re- 
sponsible for the odd perversion of facts, which reached 
its height, as Macaulay remarks, in the marvelous per- 
formance of our venerated ruler, George IV. That 
monarch, he observes, "thought that he could not give 

20 a more striking proof of his respect for the usages which 
had prevailed in Scotland before the Union than by 
disguising himself in what, before the Union, was con- 
sidered by nine Scotchmen out of ten as the dress of a 
thief." The passage recafls the too familiar anecdote 

25 about Scott and the wineglass consecrated by the 
sacred lips of his king. At one of the portrait exhibitions 
in South Kensington was hung up a representation of 
George IV, with the body of a stalwart Highlander in 
full costume, some seven or eight feet high; the face 

30 formed from the red puffy cheeks developed by innum- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 395 

erable bottles of port and burgundy at Carlton House; 
and the whole surmounted by a bonnet with waving 
plumes. Scott was chiefly responsible for disguising 
that elderly London debauchee in the costume of a wild 
Gaelic cattle-stealer, and was apparently insensible of 5 
the gross absurdity. We are told that an air of burlesque 
was thrown over the proceedings at Holyrood by the 
apparition of a true London alderman in the same 
costume as his master. An alderman who could bur- 
lesque such a monarch must indeed have been a credit lo 
to his turtle soup. Let us pass by with a brief lamenta- 
tion that so great and good a man laid himself open to 
Carlyle's charge of sham worship. W^e have lost our 
love of buff jerkins and other scraps from mediaeval 
museums, and Scott is suffering from having preferred 15 
working in stucco to carving in marble. We are perhaps 
inclined to saddle Scott unconsciously with the sins of a 
later generation. Borrow, in his delightful Lavengro, 
meets a kind of Jesuit in disguise in that sequestered 
dell where he beats "the Blazing Tinman." The Jesuit, 20 
if I remember rightly, confides to him that Scott was a 
tool of that diabolical conspiracy which has infected 
our old English Protestantism with the poison of modern 
Popery. And, though the evil may be traced further 
back, and was due to more general causes than the in- 25 
fluence of any one writer, Scott was clearly responsible 
in his degree for certain recent phenomena. The buff 
jerkin became the lineal ancestor of various copes, stoles, 
and chasubles which stink in the nostrils of honest Dis- 
senters. Our modern revivalists profess to despise the 30 



39^ NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

flimsiness of the first attempts in this direction. They 
laugh at the carpenter's Gothic of Abbotsford or Straw- 
berry Hill, and do not ask themselves how their own 
more elaborate blundering will look in the eyes of a 
5 future generation. What will our posterity think of our 
masquerading in old clothes? Will they want a new 
Cromwell to sweep away nineteenth-century shams, as 
his ancestors smashed mediaeval ruins, or will they, as 
we may rather hope, be content to let our pretentious 

lo rubbish find its natural road to ruin? One thing is 
pretty certain, and in its way comforting; that, however 
far the rage for revivalism may be pushed, nobody will 
ever want to revive the nineteenth century. But for . 
Scott, in spite of his compHcity in this wearisome process, 

15 there is something still to be said. Ivanhoe cannot be 
given up. The vivacity of the description — the delight 
with which Scott throws himself into the pursuit of his 
knicknacks and antiquarian rubbish, has something 
contagious about it. Ivanhoe, let it be granted, is no 

20 longer a work for men, but it still is, or still ought to be, 
delightful reading for boys. The ordinary boy, indeed, 
when he reads anything, seems to choose descriptions 
of the cricket matches and boat races in which his soul 
most delights. But there must still be some unsophis- 

25 ticated youths who can relish Robinson Crusoe and the 
Arabian Nights and other favorites of our own child- 
hood, and such at least should pore over the "Gentle 
and free passage of arms at Ashby," admire those in- 
credible feats with the long-bow which would have en- 

30 abled Robin Hood to meet successfully a modern volun- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 397 

teer armed with the Martini-Henry, and follow the terrific 
head-breaking of Front de Boeuf, Bois-Guilbert, the holy 
clerk of Copmanshurst, and the Noir Faineant, even to 
the time, when for no particular reason beyond the exi- 
gencies of the story, the Templar suddenly falls from his 5 
horse, and is discovered, to our no small surprise, to be 
"unscathed by the lance of the enemy," and to have 
died a victim to the violence of his own contending 
passions. If Ivanhoe has been exploded by Professor 
Freeman, it did good work in its day. If it were possible 10 
for a critic to weigh the merits of a great man in a bal- 
ance, and to decide precisely how far his excellencies ex- 
ceed his defects, we should have to set off Scott's real 
services to the spread of a genuine historical spirit 
against the encouragement which he afforded to its 15 
bastard counterfeit. To enable us rightly to appreciate 
our forefathers, to recognize that they were living men, 
and to feel our close connection with them, is to put a 
vivid imagination to one of its worthiest uses. It was 
perhaps inevitable that we should learn to appreciate 20 
our ancestors by paying them the doubtful compliment 
of external mimicry; and that only by slow degrees, and 
at the price of much humiliating experience, should we 
learn the simple lesson that a childish adult has not the 
grace of childhood. Even in his errors, however, Scott 25 
had the merit of unconsciousness, which is fast disap- 
pearing from our more elaborate affectations; and, 
therefore, though we regret, we are not irritated by his 
weakness and deficiency in true insight. He really 
enjoys his playthings too naively for the pleasure not to 30 



39^ NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

be a little contagious, when we can descend from our 
critical dignity. In his later work, indeed, the effort be- 
comes truly painful, tending more to the provocation of 
sadness than of anger. But that work is best forgotten 
5 except as an occasional warning. 

Scott, however, understood, and nobody has better 
illustrated by example, the true mode of connecting past 
and present. Mr. Palgrave, whose recognition of the 
charm of Scott's lyrics merits our gratitude, observes in 

10 the notes to the Golden Treasury that the songs about 
Brignall banks and Rosabelle exemplify "the peculiar 
skill with which Scott employs proper names;" nor, he 
adds, "is there a surer sign of high poetical genius." 
The last remark might possibly be disputed; if Milton 

15 possessed the same talent, so did Lord Macaulay, whose 
ballads, admirable as they are, are not first-rate poetry; 
but the conclusion to which the remark points is one 
which is illustrated by each of these cases. The secret 
of the power is simply this, that a man whose mind is 

20 full of historical associations somehow communicates 
us something of the sentiment which they awake in him- 
self. Scott, as all who saw him tell us, could never see 
an old towTr, or a bank, or a rush of a stream without 
instantly recalling a boundless collection of appropriate 

25 anecdotes. He might be quoted as a case in point by 
those who would explain all poetical imagination by the 
power of associating ideas. He is the poet of association. 
A proper name acts upon him like a charm. It calls up 
the past days, the heroes of the '41, or the skirmish of 

30 Drumclog, or the old Covenanting tirnes, by a spon- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 399 

taneous and inexplicable magic. When the barest 
natural object is taken into his imagination, all manner 
of past fancies and legends crystallize around it at once. 
Though it is more difficult to explain how the same 
glow which ennobled them to him is conveyed to his 5 
readers, the process somehow takes place. We catch 
the enthusiasm. A word, which strikes us as a bare ab- 
straction in the report of the Censor General, say, or in 
a collection of poor law returns, gains an entirely new 
significance when he touches it in the most casual man- 10 
ner. A kind of mellowing atmosphere surrounds all 
objects in his pages, and tinges them with poetical hues. 
Even the Scottish dialect, repulsive to some ignorant 
Southrons, becomes musical to his true admirers. In 
this power lies one secret of Scott's most successful 15 
writing. Thus, for example, I often fancy that the 
second title of Waverley — Tw Sixty Years Since — in- 
dicates precisely the distance of time at which a roman- 
tic novelist should place himself from his creations. 
They are just far enough from us to have acquired a 20 
certain picturesque coloring, which conceals the vul- 
garity, and yet leaves them living and intelligible beings. 
His best stories might be all described as Tales of a 
Grandfather. They have the charm of anecdotes told 
to the narrator by some old man who had himself been 25 
part of what he describes. Scott's best novels depend, 
for their deep interest, upon the scenery and society 
with which he had been famiUar in his early days, more 
or less harmonized by removal to what we may call, in a 
different sense from the common one, the twihght of 30 



400 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

history; that period, namely, from which the broad 
glare of the present has departed, and which we can yet 
dimly observe without making use of the dark lantern 
of ancient historians, and accepting the guidance of 
5 Dryasdust. Dandie Dinmont, though a contemporary of 
Scott's youth, represented a fast perishing phase of 
society; and Balfour of Burley, though his day was past, 
had yet left his mantle with many spiritual descendants 
who were scarcely less familiar. Between the times so 

lo fixed Scott seems to exhibit his genuine power; and 
within these limits we should find it hard to name any 
second, or indeed any third. 

Indeed, when we have gone as far as we please in 
denouncing shams, ridiculing men in buff jerkins, and 

15 the whole Wardour Street business of gimcrack and 
Brummagem antiquities, it still remains true that Scott's 
great service was what we may call the vivification of 
history. He made us feel, it is generally said, as no one 
had ever made us feel before, that the men of the past 

20 were once real human beings; and I can agree if I am 
permitted to make a certain distinction. His best serv- 
ice, I should say, was not so much in showing us the 
past as it was when it was present; but in showing us 
the past as it is really still present. His knights and 

25 crusaders and feudal nobles are after all unreal, and the 
best critics felt even in his own day that his greatest 
triumphs were in describing the Scottish peasantry of 
his time. Dandie Dinmont and Jeanie Deans and their 
like are better than many Front de Boeufs and Robin 

30 Hoods. It is in deaHng with his own contemporaries 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 401 

that he really shows the imaginative insight which en- 
titles him to be called a great creator as well as an amus- 
ing story-teller. But this, rightly stated, is not incon- 
sistent with the previous statement. For the special 
characteristic of Scott as distinguished from his prede- 5 
cessors is precisely his clear perception that the characters 
whom he loved so well and described so vividly were 
the products of a long historical evolution. His patriot- 
ism was the love of a country in which everything had 
obvious roots in its previous history. The stout farmer 10 
Dinmont was the descendant of the old borderers; the 
Deanses were survivals from the days of the Covenan- 
ters or of John Knox; every peculiarity upon which he 
delighted to dwell was invested with all the charm of 
descent from a long and picturesque history. When 15 
Fielding describes the squires or lawyers of the eight- 
eenth century, he says nothing to show that he was even 
aware of the existence of a seventeenth, or still less of a 
sixteenth century. Scott can describe no character with- 
out assigning to it its place in the social organism which 20 
has been growing up since the earliest dawn of history. 
This was, of course, no accident. He came at the time 
when the little provincial centers were just feeling the 
first invasion of the great movements from without. 
Edinburgh, whether quite comparable to Athens or not, 25 
had been for two or three generations a remarkable 
center of intellectual cultivation. Hume and Adam 
Smith were only the most conspicuous members of a 
society which monopolized pretty well all the philosophy 
which existed in the island and a great deal of the his- 30 
Prose — 26 



402 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

tory and criticism. In Scott's time the patriotic feeling 
which had been a bhnd instinct was becoming more or 
less self-conscious. The literary society in which Scott 
was leader of the Tories, and Jeffrey of the Whigs, in- 
5 eluded a large proportion of the best intellect of the time 
and was sufficiently in contact with the outside world to 
be conscious of its own characteristics. When the crash 
of the French Revolution came in Scott's youth, Burke 
denounced its a priori abstract reasonings in the name 

10 of prescription. A traditional order and belief were 
essential, as he urged, to the well-being of every human 
society. What Scott did afterwards was precisely to 
show by concrete instances, most vividly depicted, the 
value and interest of a natural body of traditions. Like 

15 many other of his ablest contemporaries, he saw with 
alarm the great movement, of which the French Revo- 
lution was the obvious embodiment, sweeping away all 
manner of local traditions and threatening to engulf 
the little society which still retained its specific char- 

20 acter in Scotland. He was stirred, too, in his whole 
nature when any sacrilegious reformer threatened to 
sweep away any part of the true old Scottish system. 
And this is, in fact, the moral implicitly involved in 
Scott's best work. Take the beggar, for example, Edie 

25 Ochiltree, the old "bluegown." Beggars, you say, are 
a nuisance and would be sentenced to starvation by 
Mr. Malthus in the name of an abstract principle of 
population. But look, says Scott, at the old-fashioned 
beggar as he really was. He had his place in society; 

30 he was the depository of the legends of the whole coun- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 403 

tryside: chatting with the lairds, the confidential friend 
of fishermen, peasants, and farmers; the oracle in all 
sports and ruler of village feasts; repaying in friendly 
offices far more than the value of the alms which he took 
as a right; a respecter of old privileges, because he had 5 
privileges himself; and ready when the French came to 
take his part in fighting for the old country. There can 
be no fear for a country, says Scott, where even the beg- 
gar is as ready to take up arms as the noble. The blue- 
gown, in short, is no waif and stray, no product of social 10 
corruption, or mere obnoxious parasite, but a genuine 
member of the fabric, who could respect himself and 
scorn servility as much as the highest members of the 
social hierarchy. Scott, as Lockhart tells us, was most 
grievously wounded by the insults of the Radical mob 15 
in Selkirk, who cried "Burke Sir Walter!" in the place 
where all men had loved and honored him. It was the 
meeting of the old and new, and the revelation to Scott 
in brutal terms of the new spirit which was destroying 
all the old social ties. Scott and Wordsworth and 20 
Coleridge and Southey and their like saw in fact the ap- 
proach of that industrial revolution, as we call it now, 
which for good or evil has been ever since developing. 
The Radicals denounced them as mere sentimentalists; 
the solid Whigs, who fancied that the revolution was 25 
never to get beyond the Reform Bill of 1832, laughed 
at them as mere obstructives; by us, who, whatever our 
opinions, speak with the advantage of later experience, 
it must be admitted that such Conservatism had its 
justification, and that good and far-seeing men might 30 



404 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

well look with alarm at changes whose far-reaching 
consequences cannot yet be estimated. Scott, mean- 
while, is the incomparable painter of the sturdy race 
which he loved so well — a race high-spirited, loyal to its 
5 principles, surpassingly energetic, full of strong affec- 
tions and manly spirits, if crabbed, bigoted, and capable 
of queer perversity and narrow self-conceit. Nor, if 
we differ from his opinions, can any one who desires to 
take a reasonable view of history doubt the interest 

lo and value of the conceptions involved. Scott was really 
the first imaginative observer who saw distinctly how 
the national type of character is the product of past his- 
tory, and embodies all the great social forces by which 
it has slowly shaped itself. That is the new element in 

15 his portraiture of human life; and we may pardon him 
if he set rather too high a value upon the picturesque 
elements which he had been the first to recognize. One 
of the acutest of recent writers upon politics, the late 
Mr. Bagehot, has insisted upon the immense value of 

20 what he called a " solid cake of customs," and the thought 
is more or less familiar to every writer of the evolutionist 
way of thinking. Scott, without any philosophy to speak 
of, poHtical or otherwise, saw and recognized intui- 
tively a typical instance. He saw how much the social 

25 fabric had been woven out of ancient tradition; and he 
made others see it more clearly than could be done by 
any abstract reasoner. 

When naturalists wish to preserve a skeleton, they 
bury an animal in an ant-hill and dig him up after many 

30 days with all the perishable matter fairly eaten away. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 405 

That is the process which great men have to undergo. 
A vast multitude of insignificant, unknown, and uncon- 
scious critics destroy what has no genuine power of re- 
sistance, and leave the remainder for posterity. Much 
disappears in every case, and it is a question, perhaps, 5 
whether the firmer parts of Scott's reputation will be 
sufficiently coherent to resist after the removal of the 
rubbish. We must admit that even his best work is of 
more or less mixed value, and that the test will be a 
severe one. Yet we hope, not only for reasons already 10 
suggested, but for one which remains to be expressed. 
The ultimate source of pleasure derivable from all art 
is that it brings you into communication with the artist. 
What you really love in the picture or the poem is the 
painter or the poet whom it brings into sympathy with 15 
you across the gulf of time. He tells you what are the 
thoughts which some fragment of natural scenery, or 
some incident of human Hfe, excited in a mind greatly 
wiser and more perceptive than your own. A dramatist 
or a novelist professes to describe different actors on his 20 
little scene, but he is really setting forth the varying 
phases of his own mind. And so Dandie Dinmont, or 
the Antiquary, or Balfour of Burley, is merely the con- 
ductor through which Scott's personal magnetism affects 
our own natures. And certainly, whatever faults a 25 
critic may discover in the work, it may be said that no 
work in our Hterature places us in communication with 
a manlier or more lovable nature. Scott, indeed, setting 
up as the landed proprietor at Abbotsford and solacing 
himself with painted plaster of Paris instead of carved 30 



4o6 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

oak, does not strike us, any more than he does Carlyle, 
as a very noble phenomenon. But luckily for us, we 
have also the Scott who must have been the most charm- 
ing of all conceivable companions; the Scott who was 
5 idolized even by a judicious pig; the Scott, who, unlike 
the irritable race of literary magnates in general, never 
lost a friend, and whose presence diffused an equable 
glow of kindly feeling to the farthest limits of the social 
system which gravitated round him. He was not pre- 

10 cisely brilHant; nobody, so far as we know, who wrote 
so many sentences has left so few that have fixed them- 
selves upon us as established commonplaces; beyond 
that unlucky phrase about " my name being MacGregor 
and my foot being on my native heath" — which is not 

15 a very admirable sentiment — I do not at present re- 
member a single gem of this kind. Landor, I think, 
said that in the whole of Scott's poetry there was only 
one good line, that, namely, in the poem about Hel- 
vellyn referring to the dog of the lost man — 

20 " When the wind waved his garments, how oft didst thou start I " 

Scott is not one of the coruscating geniuses, throw- 
ing out epigrams at every turn, and sparkling with good 
things. But the poetry, which was first admired to 
excess and then rejected with undue contempt, is now 
25 beginning to find its due level. It is not poetry of the 
first order. It is not the poetry of deep meditation or 
of rapt enthusiasm. Much that was once admired has 
now become rather offensive than otherwise. And yet 
it has a charm, which becomes more sensible the more 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 407 

familiar we grow with it, the charm of unaffected and 
spontaneous love of nature; and not only is it perfectly 
in harmony with the nature which Scott loved so well, 
but it is still the best interpreter of the sound healthy 
love of wild scenery. Wordsworth, no doubt, goes 5 
deeper; and Byron is more vigorous; and Shelley more 
ethereal. But it is, and will remain, a good thing to 
have a breath from the Cheviots brought straight into 
London streets, as Scott alone can do it. When Wash- 
ington Irving visited Scott, they had an amicable dis- 10 
pute as to the scenery: Irving, as became an American, 
complaining of the absence of forests; Scott declaring 
his love for ''his honest gray hills," and saying that if 
he did not see the heather once a year he thought he 
should die. Everybody who has refreshed himself with 15 
mountain and moor this summer should feel how much 
we owe, and how much more we are likely to owe in 
future, to the man who first inoculated us with his own 
enthusiasm, and who is still the best interpreter of the 
"honest gray hills." Scott's poetical faculty may, per- 20 
haps, be more felt in his prose than his verse. The fact 
need not be decided; but as we read the best of his novels 
we feel ourselves transported to the "distant Cheviot's 
blue;" mixing with the sturdy dalesmen, and the tough 
indomitable Puritans of his native land; for their sake 25 
we can forgive the exploded feudalism and the faded 
romance which he attempted with less success to gal- 
vanize into life. The pleasure of that healthy open-air 
Ufe, with that manly companion, is not hkely to diminish; 
and Scott as its exponent may still retain a hold upon 30 



4o8 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

our affections which would have been long ago for- 
feited if he had depended entirely on his romantic non- 
sense. We are rather in the habit of talking about a 
healthy animalism, and try most elaborately to be simple 

5 and manly. When we turn from our modern professors 
in that line, who affect a total absence of affectation, to 
Scott's Dandie Dinmonts and Edie Ochiltrees, we see 
the difference between the sham and the reahty, and 
fancy that Scott may still have a lesson or two to preach 

10 to this generation. Those to come must take care of 
themselves. 



JOHN MORLEY 

[John Morley was born at Blackburn in Lancashire, Eng/and, 
December 24, 1838. After being graduated at Lincoln College, 
Oxford, he went to London, where he began his literary work as an 
editor. In 1867, he succeeded Lewes on the Forinightly Review, 
which he edited till 1882. In 1883, he assumed the editorship of 
Macmillaii's Magazine. During this period some of his best 
known books were published : Edmund Burke, an historical study 
(1867); Critical Miscellanies {\?>'ji-\?>'] J); Voltaire {\%']2)\ Rous- 
seau (1873) ; Diderot and the Encyclopedists ( 1 878 ) ; Life ofCobden 
(1881). In 1878, the Macmillans began the "English Men of 
Letters Series," which Morley edited and to which he contributed 
a Life of Burke (1879). I^ 1883, he was elected to Parliament and 
has since been prominent in English public life. He was raised to 
the peerage as Viscount Morley of Blackburn in 1908. Among 
his later works are Walpole (1889); Cromzvell (1900); Life of 
Gladstone ( 1 903 ) ; Critical Miscellanies ( 1 908 ) .] 

John Morley is better known as an English states- 
man than as a critical essayist. But the statesman has 
never lost faith in the potency of letters, just as the 
critic and editor has never failed to find interest in the 
social aspects of literature. Any writer whose life and 
work are closely associated with the political and so- 
cial movements of his time is sure to win the attention 
of John Morley. This explains his preference for men of 
the eighteenth century, and chiefly for French writers of 
that period, for Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Condorcet 
— men who are rightly understood only in relation to 
the society of their day. 

In Morley's criticism, therefore, there is a basis 
409 



4IO NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

of ethical seriousness, a predetermined purpose to 
judge books as the reflection of serious moral truths. 
He defines literature thus: "Literature consists of all 
the books — and they are not so many — where moral 
truth and human passion are touched with a certain 
largeness, sanity and attraction of form." "Art," he 
says, "is only the transformation into ideal and imagi- 
native shapes of a predominant system and philoso- 
phy of Hfe." With Morley this philosophy always has 
reference to man in relation to his social environment; 
for with abstract truths, with doctrines, esoteric and 
erudite, he has ^nothing to do. Byron is of interest to 
him chiefly because of the "subordination in his mind 
of aesthetic to social intention." Carlyle " has no direc- 
tion to give," and. Emerson "does almost as little as 
Carlyle himself to fire men with faith in social progress 
as the crown of human endeavor." It is the man of 
letters with "that active interest in public affairs," 
which is the "only sure safeguard against inhuman 
egotism," whom Morley delights to praise. 

This conception of Hterature underlies his attitude 
toward Macaulay. He begins by asking: "What kind 
of significance or value belongs to Lord Macaulay 's 
achievements, and to what place has he claim among 
the forces of EngHsh literature?" After a briUiant an- 
alysis of Macaulay 's genius, he returns to the answer 
to his question: "Nor can it be enough for enduring 
fame in any age merely to throw a golden halo round 
the secularity of the hour. . . . If we think what 
a changed sense is already given to criticism, what a 
different conception now presides over history, . . . 
we cannot help feeling that [Macaulay] ... is the 
hero of a past which is already remote, and that he did 
little to make men fitted to face a present of which, 
close as it was to him, he seems hardly to have dreamed." 
The final adverse judgment is thus seen to be strictly 



JOHN MORLEY 411 

in accord with Morley's notion of literature and men 
of letters. 

For this reason the spirit of the essay is unsympathetic. 
Macaulay, as John Morley appraises him, is unanalytic, 
unmeditative, and lacks richness, depth, suggestion. 
" His ascendency is due to literary pomp, not to fecun- 
dity of spirit." In his style are wanting the qualities 
which for Morley connote the social temperament. 
Even when he praises the critic is sometimes almost iron- 
ically equivocal. Macaulay's "genius for narration" 
becomes " mere picturesqueness," his gift of " noble 
commonplace " sinks to " ostentatious common sense of a 
slightly coarse sort." Macaulay " has been prized less as 
a historian proper than as a master of literary art." 

Morley is safest and best in his judgments upon Ma- 
caulay as an essayist, whom, indeed, he seems mainly 
to be considering throughout the essay. Macaulay's 
amazing popularity, his powers of narration, his exact 
accord with the average sentiment of his day, his manly, 
direct, clear style, receive on the whole a just and cogent 
appreciation. 

In his own style John Morley has committed some of 
the sins with which he charges Macaulay. It is a 
style, brisk, brilliant, vital, and direct, but it is deficient 
in modulation and in the " soft play of life." In this very 
essay it suggests Macaulay in its positivity and unquali- 
fied assertiveness, its excess of superlative, its tendency 
to the balanced and parallel forms of construction, — char- 
acteristics which account in part for the feeling that 
there is a lack of detachment and fairness. For example, 
Morley asserts without proper restriction that Ma- 
caulay was hurried and slap-dash in his methods of 
composition; whereas Macaulay as a writer of history 
was infinitely painstaking in correction and revision. 
Morley's own style shows, moreover, a weakly con- 
trolled tendency to figurativeness, a tendency that 



412 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

sometimes results in strained or mixed tropes. Never- 
theless, as a medium of expression, his style is a 
notable example of effectiveness. In the following essay- 
there may be noted the use of varied and supple phrase, 
a copiousness and appositeness of diction, and a con- 
trol of material that convincingly testify to Morley's 
distinction as a writer. His style, in short, is an ex- 
ample of what he approves in the writings of others: 
a " speech that is strong by natural force, an utterance 
without trick, without affectation, without mannerism." 



MACAULAY 

It is told of Strafford that before reading any book 
for the first time, he would call for a sheet of paper, and 
then proceed to write down upon it some sketch of the 
ideas that he already had upon the subject of the book, 

5 and of the questions that he expected to find answered. 
No one who has been at the pains to try the experiment, 
will doubt the usefulness of Strafford's practice: it gives 
to our acquisitions from books clearness and reality, a 
right place and an independent shape. At this moment 

10 we are all looking for the biography of an illustrious 
man of letters, written by a near kinsman, who is him- 
self naturally endowed with keen literary interests, and 
who has invigorated his academic cultivation by prac- 
tical engagement in considerable affairs of public busi- 

15 ness. Before taking up Mr. Trevelyan's two volumes, 
it is perhaps worth while, on Strafford's plan, to ask 
ourselves shortly what kind of significance or value be- 
longs to Lord Macaulay's achievements, and to what 



MACAULAY 413 

place he has a claim among the forces of English litera- 
ture. It is seventeen years since he died, and those of 
us who never knew him nor ever saw him now think 
about his work with that perfect detachment which is 
impossible in the case of actual contemporaries. 5 

That Macaulay comes in the very front rank in the 
mind of the ordinary bookbuyer of our day is quite 
certain. It is an amusement with some people to put 
an imaginary case of banishment to a desert island, with 
the privilege of choosing the works of one author, and 10 
no more, to furnish literary companionship and refresh- 
ment for the rest of a Hfetime. Whom would one select 
for this momentous post? Clearly the author must be 
voluminous, for days on desert islands are many and 
long; he must be varied in his moods, his topics, and his 15 
interests; he must have a great deal to say, and must 
have a power of saying it that shall arrest a depressed 
and dolorous spirit. Enghshmen, of course, would 
with mechanical unanimity call for Shakespeare; Ger- 
mans could hardly hesitate about Goethe; and a sen- 20 
sible Frenchman would pack up the ninety volumes 
of Voltaire. It would be at least as interesting to know 
the object of a second choice, supposing the tyrant were 
in his clemency to give us two authors. In the case of 
Englishmen there is some evidence as to a popular 25 
preference. A recent traveler in Australia informs us 
that the three books which he found on every squatter's 
shelf, and which at last he knew before he crossed the 
threshold that he should be sure to find, were Shake- 
speare, the Bible, and Macaulay's Essays. This is only 30 



414 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

an illustration of a feeling about Macaulay that has 
been almost universal among the English-speaking 
peoples. 
We may safely say that no man obtains and keeps 
5 for a great many years such a position as this, unless he 
is possessed of some very extraordinary qualities, or 
else of common qualities in a very uncommon and ex- 
traordinary degree. The world, says Goethe, is more 
willing to endure the Incongruous than to be patient 

10 under the Insignificant. Even those who set least value 
on what Macaulay does for his readers, may still feel 
bound to distinguish the elements that have given him 
his vast popularity. The inquiry is not a piece of merely 
literary criticism, for it is impossible that the work of so 

15 imposing a writer should have passed through the hands 
of every man and woman of his time who has even the 
humblest pretensions to cultivation, without leaving a 
very decided mark on their habits both of thought and 
expression. As a plain matter of observation, it is im- 

20 possible to take up a newspaper or a review, for instance, 
without perceiving Macaulay's influence both in the 
style and the temper of modern journalism, and journa- 
lism in its turn acts upon the style and temper of its 
enormous uncounted public. The man who now suc- 

25 ceeds in catching the ear of the writers of leading ar- 
ticles, is in the position that used to be held by the 
head of some great theological school, whence disciples 
swarmed forth to reproduce in ten thousand pulpits the 
arguments, the opinions, the images, the tricks, the ges- 

30 tures, and the mannerisms of a single master. 



MACAULAY 415 

Two men of very different kinds have thoroughly im- 
pressed the journalists of our time, Macaulay and Mr. 
Mill. Mr. Carlyle we do not add to them; he is, as the 
Germans call Jean Paul, der Einzige. And he is a poet, 
while the other two are in their degrees serious and 5 
argumentative writers, dealing in different ways with the 
great topics that constitute the matter and business of 
daily discussion. They are both of them practical 
enough to interest men handling real affairs, and yet 
they are general or theoretical enough to supply such 10 
men with the large and ready commonplaces which are 
so useful to a profession that has to produce literary 
graces and philosophical decorations at an hour's no- 
tice. It might perhaps be said of these two distinguished 
men that our public writers owe most of their virtues to 15 
the one, and most of their vices to the other. If Mill 
taught some of them to reason, Macaulay tempted more 
of them to declaim: if Mill set an example of patience, 
tolerance, and fair examination of hostile opinions, 
Macaulay did much to encourage oracular arrogance, 20 
and a rather too thrasonical complacency; if Mill sowed 
ideas of the great economic, political, and moral bear- 
ings of the forces of society, Macaulay trained a taste 
for superficial particularities, trivial circumstantialities of 
local color, and all the paraphernalia of the pseudo- 25 
picturesque. 

Of course nothing so obviously untrue is meant as 
that this is an account of Macaulay 's own quahty. 
What is empty pretension in the leading article was 
often a warranted self-assertion in Macaulay; what is 30 



41 6 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

little more than testiness in it, is in him often a generous 
indignation. What became and still remain in those 
who have made him their model, substantive and or- 
ganic vices, the foundation of Hterary character and 
5 intellectual temper, were in him the incidental defects of 
a vigorous genius. And we have to take a man of his 
power and vigor with all his drawbacks, for the one are 
wrapped up in the other. Charles Fox used to apply to 
Burke a passage that Quintilian wrote about Ovid. Si 

10 animi siii afjedihiis temperare quam indidgere maluis- 
set, quoted Fox, quid vir iste prcEstare non potuerit! 
But this is really not at all certain either of Ovid, or 
Burke, or any one else. It suits moralists to tell us that 
excellence lies in the happy mean and nice balance of 

15 our faculties and impulses, and perhaps in so far as our 
own contentment and an easy passage through life are 
involved, what they tell us is true. But for making a mark 
in the world, for rising to supremacy in art or thought 
or affairs — whatever those aims may be worth — a man 

20 possibly does better to indulge rather than to chide or 
grudge his genius, and to pay the penalties for his weak- 
nesses rather than run any risk of mutilating those strong 
faculties of which they happen to be an inseparable ac- 
cident. Versatihty is not a universal gift among the able 

25 men of the world; not many of them have so many gifts 
of the spirit as to be free to choose by what pass they 
will climb "the steep where Fame's proud temple shines 
afar." If Macaulay had applied himself to the cultiva- 
tion of a balanced judgment, of tempered phrases, and of 

30 relative propositions, he would probably have sunk into 



MACAULAY 417 

an impotent tameness. A great pugilist has sometimes 
been converted from the error of his ways, and been led 
zealously to cherish gospel graces, but the hero's dis- 
courses have seldom been edifying. Macaulay, divested 
of all the exorbitancies of his spirit and his style, would 5 
have been a Samson shorn of the locks of his strength. 

Although, however, a writer of marked quality may 
do well to let his genius develop its spontaneous forces 
without too assiduous or vigilant repression, trusting to 
other writers of equal strength in other directions, and 10 
to the general fitness of things and operation of time, 
to redress the balance, still it is the task of criticism in 
counting up the contributions of one of these strong men 
to examine the mischiefs no less than the benefits inci- 
dent to their work. There is no puny carping nor cavil- 15 
ing in the process. It is because such men are strong 
that they are able to do harm, and they may injure the 
taste and judgment of a whole generation, just because 
they are never mediocre. That is implied in strength. 
Macaulay is not to be measured now merely as if he were 20 
the author of a new book. His influence has been a dis- 
tinct literary force, and in an age of reading, this is to 
be a distinct force in deciding the temper, the process, 
the breadth, of men's opinions, no less than the manner 
of expressing them. It is no new observation that the 25 
influence of an author becomes in time something apart 
from his books, and that a certain generalized or ab- 
stract personality impresses itself on our minds, long 
after we have forgotten the details of his opinions, the 
arguments by which he enforced them, and even, what 30 
Prose — 27 



4l8 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

are usually the last to escape us, the images by which 
he illustrated them. Phrases and sentences are a mask: 
but we detect the features of the man behind the mask. 
This personahty of a favorite author is a real and power- 
5 ful agency. Unconsciously we are infected with his 
humors; we apply his methods; we find ourselves copy- 
ing the rhythm and measure of his periods; we wonder 
how he would have acted, or thought, or spoken in our 
circumstances. Usually a strong writer leaves a special 

lo mark in some particular region of mental activity: the 
final product of him is to fix some persistent religious 
mood, or some decisive intellectual bias, or else some 
trick of the tongue. Now Macaulay has contributed no 
philosophic ideas to the speculative stock, nor has he 

15 developed any one great historic or social truth. His 
work is always full of a high spirit of manliness, probity, 
and honor; but he is not of that small band to whom 
we may apply Mackintosh's thrice and four times en- 
viable panegyric on the eloquence of Dugald Stewart, 

20 that its peculiar glory consisted in having " breathed the 
love of virtue into whole generations of pupils." He has 
painted many striking pictures, and imparted a certain 
reaUty to our conception of many great scenes of the 
past. He did good service in banishing once for all those 

25 sentimental Jacobite leanings and prejudices which 
had been kept alive by the sophistry of the most popular 
of historians, and the imagination of the most popular 
of romance writers. But where he set his stamp has 
been upon style; style in its widest sense, not merely 

30 on the grammar and mechanism of writing, but on what 



MACAULAY 4^9 

De Quincey described as its organology; style, that is to 
say, in its relation to ideas and feelings, its commerce 
with thought, and its reaction on what one may call the 
temper or conscience of the intellect. 

Let no man suppose that it matters little whether the 5 
most universally popular of the serious authors of a gen- 
eration — and Macaulay was nothing less than this — 
affects style coupe or style soiitenu. The critic of style 
is not the dancing master, declaiming on the deep in- 
effable things that lie in a minuet. He is not the virtuoso lo 
of supines and gerundives. The morality of style goes 
deeper "than dull fools suppose." When Comte took 
pains to prevent any sentence exceeding two lines of his 
manuscript or five of print; to restrict every paragraph 
to seven sentences; to exclude every hiatus between two 15 
sentences or even between two paragraphs; and never 
to reproduce any word, except the auxiliary monosyl- 
lables, in two consecutive sentences; he justified his 
literary solicitude by insisting on the wholesomeness alike 
to heart and intelligence of submission to artificial in- 20 
stitutions. He felt, after he had once mastered the habit 
of the new yoke, that it became the source of continual 
and unforeseeable improvements even in thought, and 
he perceived that the reason why verse is a higher kind 
of literary perfection than prose, is that verse imposes 25 
a greater number of rigorous forms. We may add that 
verse itself is perfected, in the hands of men of poetic 
genius, in proportion to the severity of this mechanical 
regulation. Where Pope or Racine had one rule of 
meter, Victor Hugo has twenty, and he observes them 30 



420 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

as rigorously as an algebraist or an astronomer observes 
the rules of calculation or demonstration. One, then, 
who touches the style of a generation acquires no trifling 
authority over its thought and temper, as well as over 
5 the length of its sentences. 

The first and most obvious sedret of Macaulay's 
place on popular bookshelves is that he has a true genius 
for narration, and narration will always in the eyes not 
only of our squatters in the Australian bush, but of the 

10 many all over the world, stand first among literary 
gifts. The common run of plain men, as has been no- 
ticed since the beginning of the world, are as eager as 
children for a story, and Hke children they will embrace 
the man who will tell them a story, with abundance of 

15 details and plenty of color, and a realistic assurance that 
it is no mere make-believe. Macaulay never stops to 
brood over an incident or a character, with an inner eye 
intent on penetrating to the lowest depth of motive and 
cause, to the furthest complexity of impulse, calculation, 

20 and subtle incentive. The spirit of analysis is not in 
him, and the divine spirit of meditation is not in him. 
His whole mind runs in action and movement; it busies 
itself with eager interest in all objective particulars. 
He is seized by the external and the superficial, and 

25 revels in every detail that appeals to the five senses. 
"The brilhant Macaulay," said Emerson, with slight 
exaggeration, "who expresses the tone of the English 
governing classes of the day, explicitly teaches that good 
means good to eat, good to wear, material commodity." 



MACAULAY 421 

So ready a faculty of exultation in the exceeding great 
glories of taste and touch, of loud sound and glittering 
spectacle, is a gift of the utmost service to the narrator 
who craves immense audiences. Let it be said that if 
Macaulay exults in the details that go to our five senses, 5 
his sensuousness is always clean, manly, and fit for 
honest dayHght and the summer sun. There is none 
of that curious odor of autumnal decay that chngs to 
the passion of a more modern school for color and flavor 
and the enumerated treasures of subtle indulgence. 10 

Mere picturesqueness, however, is a minor qualifica- 
tion compared with another quaHty which everybody 
assumes himself to have, but which is in reality extremely 
uncommon; the quality, I mean, of teUing a tale directly 
and in straightforward order. In speaking of Hallam, 15 
Macaulay complained that Gibbon had brought into 
fashion an unpleasant trick of telhng a story by impli- 
cation and allusion. This provoking obHquity has cer- 
tainly increased rather than decUned since Hallam's day, 
and it has reached its height and climax in the latest 20 
addition of all to our works of popular history, Mr. 
Green's clever book upon the EngUsh People. Mr. 
Froude, it is true, whatever may be his shortcomings 
on the side of sound moral and political judgment, has 
admirable gifts in the way of straightforward narration, 25 
and Mr. Freeman, when he does not press too hotly 
after emphasis and abstains from overloading his ac- 
count with superabundance of detail, is usually excel- 
lent in the way of direct description. Still, it is not merely 
because these two writers are aUve and Macaulay is not, 30 



422 NINEtEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

that most people would say of him that he is unequaled 
in our time in his mastery of the art of letting us know 
in an express and unmistakable way exactly what it was 
that happened, though it is quite true that in many por- 
5 tions of his too elaborated History of William the Third 
he describes a large number of events about which, I 
think, no sensible man can in the least care either how 
they happened, or whether indeed they happened at all 
or not. 

lo Another reason why people have sought Macaulay is 
that he has in one way or another something to tell them 
about many of the most striking personages and interest- 
ing events in the history of mankind. And he does really 
tell them something. If any one will be at the trouble 

15 to count up the number of those names that belong to the 
world and time, about which Macaulay has found not 
merely something, but something definite and pointed 
to say, he will be astonished to see how large a portion 
of the wide historic realm is traversed in that ample 

20 flight of reference, allusion, and illustration, and what 
unsparing copiousness of knowledge gives substance, 
meaning, and attraction to that blaze and glare of 
rhetoric. 

Macaulay came upon the world of letters, just as the 

25 middle classes were expanding into enormous prosperity, 
were vastly increasing in numbers, and were becoming 
more alive than they had ever been before to literary 
interests. His Essays are as good as a Hbrary; they 
make an incomparable manual and vade mecum for a 

30 bu-sy uneducated man who has curiosity and enlighten- 



MACAULAY 423 

ment enough to wish to know a little about the great lives 
and great thoughts, the shining words and many-colored 
complexities of action, that have marked the journey 
of man through the ages. Macaulay had an intimate ac- 
quaintance both with the imaginative hterature and the 5 
history of Greece and Rome, with the hterature and the 
history of modern Italy, of France, and of England. 
Whatever his special subject, he contrives to pour into 
it with singular dexterity a stream of rich, graphic, and 
telling illustrations from all these widely diversified 10 
sources. Figures from history, ancient and modern, 
sacred and secular; characters from plays and novels 
from Plautus down to Walter Scott and Jane Austen; 
images and similes from poets of every age and every 
nation, "pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, 15 
tragical-historical;" shrewd thrusts from satirists, wise 
saws from sages, pleasantries caustic or pathetic from 
humorists; all throng Macaulay 's pages with the bustle 
and variety and animation of some glittering masque 
and cosmoramic revel of great books and heroical men. 20 
Hence, though Macaulay was in mental constitution 
one of the very least Shakespearean writers that ever 
lived, yet he has the Shakespearean quality of taking 
his reader though an immense gallery of interesting char- 
acters and striking situations. No writer can now ex- 25 
pect to attain the widest popularity as a man of letters 
unless he gives to the world multa as w^ell as miiltiim. 
Sainte-Beuve, the most eminent man of letters in France 
in our generation, wrote no less than twenty-seven 
volumes of his incomparable Causeries. Mr. Carlyle, 30 



424 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

the most eminent man of letters in England in our gen- 
eration, has taught us that silence is golden in thirty 
volumes. Macaulay was not so exuberantly copious as 
these two illustrious writers, but he had the art of being 
5 as various without being so voluminous. 

There has been a great deal of deUberate and syste- 
matic imitation of Macaulay's style, often by clever men 
who might well have trusted to their own resources. 
Its most conspicuous vices are very easy to imitate, but 

lo it is impossible for any one who is less familiar with 
literature than Macaulay was, to reproduce his style 
effectively, for the reason that it is before all else the style 
of great literary knowledge. Nor is that all. Macaulay's 
knowledge was not only very wide; it was both thoroughly 

IS accurate and instantly ready. For this stream of apt 
illustrations he was indebted to his extraordinary mem- 
ory, and his rapid eye for contrasts and analogies. They 
come to the end of his pen as he writes; they are not 
laboriously hunted out in indexes, and then added by 

20 way of afterthought and extraneous interpolation. 
Hence quotations and references that in a writer even 
of equal knowledge, but with his wits less promptly 
about him, would seem mechanical and awkward, find 
their place in a page of Macaulay as if by a delightful 

25 process of complete assimilation and spontaneous fusion. 

We may be sure that no author could have achieved 
Macaulay's boundless popularity among his contem- 
poraries, unless his work had abounded in what is sub- 
stantially Commonplace. Addison puts in fine writing, 



MACAULAY 425 

sentiments that are natural without being obvious, and 
this is a true account of the "law" of the exquisite lit- 
erature of the Queen Anne men. We may perhaps add 
to Addison's definition, that the great secret of the best 
kind of popularity is always the noble or imaginative 5 
handling of Commonplace. Shakespeare may at first 
seem an example to the contrary; and indeed is it not a 
standing marvel that the greatest writer of a nation that 
is distinguished among all nations for the pharisaism, 
Puritanism, and unimaginative narrowness of its judg- 10 
ments on conduct and type of character, should be para- 
mount over all writers for the breadth, maturity, full- 
ness, subtlety, and infinite variousness of his conception 
of human life and nature? One possible answer to the 
perplexity is that the puritanism does not go below the 15 
surface in us, and that EngHshmen are not really limited 
in their view by the too strait formulas that are supposed 
to contain their explanations of the moral universe. 
On this theory the popular appreciation of Shakespeare 
is the irrepressible response of the hearty inner man to 20 
a voice in which he recognizes the full note of human 
nature, and those wonders of the world which are not 
dreamt of in his professed philosophy. A more obvious 
answer than this is that Shakespeare's popularity with 
the many is not due to those finer glimpses that are the 25 
very essence of all poetic delight to the few, but to his 
thousand other magnificent attractions, and above all, 
after his skill as a pure dramatist and master of scenic 
interest and situation, to the lofty or pathetic setting 
with which he vivifies, not the subtleties or refinements, 30 



426 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

but the commonest and most elementary traits of the 
commonest and most elementary human moods. The 
few with minds touched by nature or right cultivation to 
the finer issues, admire the supreme genius which takes 
5 some poor Italian tale, with its coarse plot and gross 
personages, and shooting it through with threads of 
variegated meditation, produces a masterpiece of pene- 
trative reflection and high pensive suggestion as to the 
deepest things and most secret parts of the life of men. 

30 But to the general these finer threads are undiscernible. 
What touches them, and most rightly touches them and 
us all, in the Shakespearean poetry, are topics eternally 
old, yet of eternal freshness, the perennial truisms of 
the grave and the bridechamber, of shifting fortune, 

15 the surprises of destiny, the emptiness of the answered 
vow. This is the region in which the poet wins his 
widest if not his hardest triumphs, the region of the noble 
Commonplace. 

A writer dealing with such matters as principally oc- 

20 cupied Macaulay has not the privilege of resort to these 
great poetic inspirations. Yet history, too, has its gen- 
erous commonplaces, its plausibilities of emotion, and 
no one has ever delighted more than Macaulay did to 
appeal to the fine truisms that cluster round love of 

25 freedom and love of native land. The high rhetorical 
topics of liberty and patriotism are his readiest instru- 
ments for kindling a glowing reflection of these mag- 
nanimous passions in the breasts of his readers. That 
Englishman is hardly to be envied who can read without 

30 a glow such passages as that in the History about Tu- 



MACAULAY 427 

renne being startled by the shout of stern exultation with 
which his English aUies advanced to the combat, and 
expressing the delight of a true soldier when he learned 
that it was ever the fashion of Cromwell's pikemen to 
rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy; while even 5 
the banished cavaliers felt an emotion of national pride 
when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, outnum- 
bered by foes and abandoned by friends, drive before it 
in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain, and force 
a passage into a counterscarp which had just been pro- 10 
nounced impregnable by the ablest of the marshals of 
France. Such prose as this is not less thrilling to a man 
who loves his country, than the spirited verse of the 
Lays of Ancient Rome. And the commonplaces of 
patriotism and freedom would never have been so power- 15 
ful in Macaulay's hands if they had not been inspired 
by a sincere and hearty faith in them in the soul of the 
writer. His unanalytical turn of mind kept him free of 
any temptation to think of love of country as a prejudice, 
or a passion for freedom as an illusion. The cosmo- 20 
politan or international idea which such teachers as 
Cobden have tried to impress on our stubborn islanders, 
would have found in Macaulay not lukewarm or skep- 
tical adherence, but point-blank opposition and denial. 
He believed as stoutly in the supremacy of Great Britain 25 
in the history of the good causes of Europe, as M. Thiers 
believes in the supremacy of France, or Mazzini be- 
lieved in that of Italy. The thought of the prodigious 
industr/, the inventiveness, the stout enterprise, the free 
government, the wise and equal laws, the noble litera- 30 



428 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

ture, of this fortunate island and its majestic empire 
beyond the seas, and the discretion, valor, and tenacity 
by which all these great material and still greater in- 
tangible possessions had been first won and then kept 
S against every hostile comer whether domestic or foreign, 
sent through Macaulay a thrill, like that which the 
thought of Paris and its heroisms moves in the great 
poet of France, or sight of the dear city of the Violet 
Crown moved in an Athenian of old. Thus habitually, 

10 with all sincerity of heart, to offer to one of the greater 
popular prepossessions the incense due to any other idol 
of superstition, sacred and of indisputable authority, and 
to let this adoration be seen shining in every page, is 
one of the keys that every man must find who would 

15 make a quick and sure way into the temple of contempo- 
rary fame. 

It is one of the first things to be said about Macaulay, 
that he was in exact accord with the common average 
sentiment of his day on every subject on which he spoke. 

20 His superiority was not of that highest kind which leads 
a man to march in thought on the outside margin of 
the crowd, watching them, sympathizing with them, 
hoping for them, but apart. Macaulay was one of the 
middle-class crowd in his heart, and only rose above it 

25 by extraordinary gifts of expression. He had none of 
that ambition which inflames some hardy men, to make 
new beliefs and new passions enter the minds of their 
neighbors; his ascendancy is due to literary pomp, not 
to fecundity of spirit. No one has ever surpassed him 

30 in the art of combining resolute and ostentatious com- 



MAC AULA Y 429 

mon sense of a slightly coarse sort in choosing his point 
of view, with so considerable an appearance of dignity 
and elevation in setting it forth and impressing it upon 
others. The elaborateness of his style is very likely to 
mislead people into imagining for him a corresponding 5 
elaborateness of thought and sentiment. On the con- 
trary, Macaulay's mind was really very simple, strait, 
and with as few notes in its register, to borrow a phrase 
from the language of vocal compass, as there are few 
notes, though they are very loud, in the register of his 10 
written prose. When we look more closely into it, what 
at first wore the air of dignity and elevation, in truth 
rather disagreeably resembles the narrow assurance of a 
man who knows that he has with him the great battal- 
ions of public opinion. We are always quite sure that if 15 
Macaulay had been an Athenian citizen towards the 
ninety-fifth Olympiad, he would have taken sides with 
Anytus and Meletus in the impeachment of Socrates. 
A popular author must take the accepted maxims for 
granted in a thoroughgoing way. He must suppress 20 
any whimsical fancy for applying the Socratic elenchus, 
or any other engine of criticism, skepticism, or verifica- ' 
tion, to those sentiments or current precepts of morals, 
which may in fact be very two-sided and may be much 
neglected in practice, but which the public opinion of 25 
his time requires to be treated in theory and in literature 
as if they had been cherished and held sacred semper, 
ubique, et ah omnibus. — 

This is just what Macaulay does, and it is commonly 
supposed to be no heavy fault in him or any other writer 30 



430 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

for the common public. Man cannot live by analysis 
alone, nor nourish himself on the secret delights of 
irony. And if Macaulay had only reflected the more 
generous of the prejudices of mankind, it would have 

5 been well enough. Burke, for instance, was a writer 
who revered the prejudices of a modern society as deeply 
as Macaulay did; he believed society to be founded on 
prejudices and held compact by them. Yet what size 
there is in Burke, what fine perspective, what momen- 

10 tum, what edification! It may be pleaded that there is 
the literature of edification, and there is the literature 
of knowledge, and that the qualities proper to the one 
cannot lawfully be expected from the other, and would 
only be very much out of place if they should happen 

15 to be found there. But there are two answers to this. 
First, Macaulay in the course of his varied writings dis- 
cusses all sorts of ethical and other matters, and is not 
simply a chronicler of party and intrigue, of dynasties 
and campaigns. Second, and more than this, even if 

20 he had never traveled beyond the composition of his- 
torical record, he could still have sown his pages, as does 
every truly great writer, no matter what his subject 
may be, with those significant images or far-reaching 
suggestions, which suddenly light up a whole range of 

25 distant thoughts and sympathies within us; which in an 
instant affect the sensibilities of men with a something 
new and unforeseen; and which awaken, if only for a 
passing moment, the faculty and response of the diviner 
mind. Tacitus does all this, and Burke does it, and 

30 that is why men who care nothing for Roman despots or 



MACAULAY 43 1 

for Jacobin despots, will still perpetually turn to those 
writers almost as if they were on the level of great poets 
or very excellent spiritual teachers. 

One secret is that they, and all such men as they were, 
had that of which Macaulay can hardly have had the 5 
rudimentary germ, the faculty of deep abstract medi- 
tation and surrender to the fruitful "leisures of the 
spirit." We can picture Macaulay talking, or making 
a speech in the House of Commons, or buried in a book, 
or scouring his library for references, or covering his 10 
blue foolscap with dashing periods, or accentuating his 
sentences and barbing his phrases; but can anybody 
think of him as meditating, as modestly pondering and 
wondering, as possessed for so much as ten minutes by 
that spirit of inwardness which has never been wholly 15 
wanting in any of those kings and princes of literature, 
with whom it is good for men to sit in counsel ? He seeks 
Truth, not as she should be sought, devoutly, tenta- 
tively, and with the air of one touching the hem of a 
sacred garment, but clutching her by the hair of the head 20 
and dragging her after him in a kind of boisterous 
triumph, a prisoner of war and not a goddess. 

All this finds itself reflected, as the inner temper of a 
man always is reflected, in his style of written prose. 
The merits of his prose are obvious enough. It naturally 25 
reproduces the good qualities of his understanding, its 
strength, manHness, and directness. That exultation in 
material goods and glories of which we have already 
spoken makes his pages rich in color, and gives them 
the effect of a sumptuous gala suit. Certainly the bro- 30 



432 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

cade is too brand-new, and has none of the delicate 
charm that comes to such finery when it is a Httle faded. 
Again, nobody can have any excuse for not knowing 
exactly what it is that Macaulay means. We may as- 
5 suredly say of his prose what Boileau says of his own 
poetry — Et nion vers, Men ou inal, dit toujours qiielque 
chose. This is a prodigious merit, when we reflect with 
what fatal alacrity human language lends itself in the 
hands of so many performers upon the pliant instrument, 

lo to all sorts of obscurity, ambiguity, disguise and pre- 
tentious mystification. Scaliger is supposed to have 
remarked of the Basques and their desperate tongue: 
"'Tis said the Basques understand one another; for 
my part, I will never believe it." The same pungent 

15 doubt might apply to loftier members of the hierarchy 
of speech than that forlorn dialect, but never to English 
as handled by Macaulay. He never wrote an obscure 
sentence in his life, and this may seem a small merit, 
until we remember of how few writers we could say the 

20 same. 

Macaulay is of those who think prose as susceptible 
of poHshed and definite form as verse, and he was, we 
should suppose, of those also who hold the type and 
mold of all written language to be spoken language. 

25 There are more reasons for demurring to the soundness 
of the latter doctrine than can conveniently be made to 
fill a digression here. For one thing, spoken language 
necessarily implies one or more listeners, whereas writ- 
ten language may often have to express meditative 

30 moods and trains of inward reflection that move through 



MACAULAY 433 

the mmd without trace of external reference, and that 
would lose their special traits by the introduction of any 
suspicion that they were to be overheard. Again, even 
granting that all composition must be supposed to be 
meant by the fact of its existence to be addressed to a 5 
body of readers, it still remains to be shown that indi- 
rect address to the inner ear should follow the same 
method and rhythm as address directly through impres- 
sions on the outer organ. The attitude of the recipient 
mind is different, and there is the symbolism of a new 10 
medium between it and the speaker. The writer, being 
cut off from all those effects which are producible by the 
physical intonations of the voice, has to find substitutes 
for them by other means, by subtler cadences, by a more 
varied modulation, by firmer notes, by more complex 15 
circuits, than suffice for the utmost perfection of spoken 
language, which has all the potent and manifold aids 
of personality. In writing, whether it be prose or verse, 
you are free to produce effects whose peculiarity one can 
only define vaguely by saying that the senses have one 20 
part less in them than in any other of the forms and 
eft'ects of art, and the imaginary voice one part more. 
But the question need not be labored here, because 
there can be no dispute as to the quality of Macaulay's 
prose. Its measures are emphatically the measures of 25 
spoken deliverance. Those who have made the experi- 
ment, pronounce him to be one of the authors whose 
works are most admirably fitted for reading aloud. His 
firmness and directness of statement, his spiritedness, 
his art of selecting salient and highly colored detail, and 3° 
Prose— 28 



434 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

all his other merits as a narrator keep the listener's 
attention, and make him the easiest of writers to follow. 
Although, however, clearness, directness, and posi- 
tiveness are master qualities and the indispensable foun- 
5 dations of all good style, yet does the matter plainly by 
no means end with them. And it is even possible to 
have these virtues so unhappily proportioned and in- 
auspiciously mixed with other turns and casts of mind, 
as to end in work with little grace or harmony or fine 

10 tracery about it, but only overweening purpose and ve- 
hement wull. And it is overweeningness and self-confi- 
dent will that are the chief notes of Macaulay's style. 
It has no benignity. Energy is doubtless a delightful 
quaHty, but then Macaulay's energy is energy without 

15 momentum, and he impresses us more by a strong 
volubility than by volume. It is the energy of interests 
and intuitions, which though they are profoundly sin- 
cere if ever they were sincere in any man, are yet in the 
relations which they comprehend, essentially super- 

20 ficial. 

Still, trenchancy whether in speaker or writer is a 
most effective tone for a large public. It gives them con- 
fidence in their man, and prevents tediousness — except 
to those who reflect how delicate is the poise of truth, 

25 what steeps and pits encompass the dealer in unqualified 
propositions. To such persons, a writer who is tren- 
chant in every sentence of every page, who never lapses 
for a line into the contingent, who marches through the 
intricacies of things in a blaze of certainty, is not only a 

30 wTiter to be distrusted, but the owner of a doubtful and 



MACAULAY 435 

displeasing style. It is a great test of style to watch how 
an author disposes of the quahfications, limitations, and 
exceptions that clog the wings of his main proposition. 
The grave and conscientious men of the seventeenth 
century insisted on packing them all honestly along 5 
with the main proposition itself within the bounds of 
a single period. Burke arranges them in tolerably close 
order in the paragraph. Dr. Newman, that winning 
writer, disperses them Hghtly over his page. Of Ma- 
caulay it is hardly unfair to say that he dispatches all 10 
qualifications into outer space before he begins to write, 
or if he magnanimously admits one or two here and 
there, it is only to bring them the more imposingly to 
the same murderous end. 

We have spoken of Macaulay's interests and intuitions 15 
wearing a certain air of superficiality; there is a feeling 
of the same kind about his attempts to be genial. It is 
not truly festive. There is no abandonment in it. It 
has no deep root in moral humor, and is merely a literary 
form, resembhng nothing so much as the hard geniality 20 
of some clever college tutor of stiff manners entertain- 
ing undergraduates at an official breakfast party. This 
is not because his tone is bookish; on the contrary, his 
tone and level are distinctly those of the man of the world. 
But one always seems to find that neither a wide range 25 
of cultivation nor familiar access to the best Whig circles 
had quite removed the stiffness and self-conscious pre- 
cision of the Clapham Sect. We would give much for 
a Httle more flexibihty, and would welcome even a 
slight consciousness of infirmity. As has been said, the 30 



436 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

only people whom men cannot pardon are the perfect. 
Macaulay is like the military king who never suffered 
himself to be seen, even by the attendants in his bed- 
chamber, until he had had time to put on his uniform and 

5 jack boots. His severity of eye is very wholesome; it 
makes his writing firm, and firmness is certainly one of 
the first qualities that good writing must have. But 
there is such a thing as soft and considerate precision, 
as well as hard and scolding precision. Those most 

10 interesting EngHsh critics of the generation slightly an- 
terior to Macaulay, — Hazlitt, Lamb, De Quincey, Leigh 
Hunt, — were fully his equals in precision, and yet they 
knew how to be clear, acute, and definite, without that 
edginess and inelasticity which is so conspicuous in 

15 Macaulay 's criticisms, ahke in their matter and their 
form. 

To borrow the figure of an old writer, Macaulay's 
prose is not Hke a flowing vestment to his thought, but 
Hke a suit of armour. It is often splendid and ghtter- 

20 ing, and the movement of the opening pages of his History 
is superb in its dignity. But that movement is excep- 
tional. As a rule there is the hardness, if there is also 
often the sheen, of highly-wrought metal. Or, to change 
our figure, his pages are composed as a handsome edi- 

25 fice is reared, not as a fine statue or a frieze " with bossy 
sculptures graven" grows up in the imaginative mind of 
the statuary. There is no liquid continuity, such as 
indicates a writer possessed by his subject and not merely 
possessing it. The periods are marshaled in due order 

30 of procession, bright and high-stepping; they never 



MACAULAY 437 

escape under an impulse of emotion into the full current 
of a brimming stream. What is curious is that though 
Macaulay seems ever to be brandishing a two-edged 
gleaming sword, and though he steeps us in an atmos- 
phere of belligerency, yet we are never conscious of in- 5 
ward agitation in him, and perhaps this alone would 
debar him from a place among the greatest writers. 
For they, under that reserve, suppression, or manage- 
ment, which is an indispensable condition of the finest 
rhetorical art, even when aiming at the most passionate 10 
effects, still succeed in conveying to their readers a 
thrilling sense of the strong fires that are glowing under- 
neath. Now when Macaulay advances with his hector- 
ing sentences and his rough pistoling ways, we feel all 
the time that his pulse is as steady as that of the most 15 
practiced duellist who ever ate fire. He is too cool to 
be betrayed into a single phrase of happy improvisation. 
His pictures glare, but are seldom warm. Those strokes 
of minute circumstantiality which he loved so dearly, 
show that even in moments when his imagination might 20 
seem to be moving both spontaneously and ardently, 
it was really only a literary instrument, a fashioning 
tool and not a melting flame. Let us take a single ex- 
ample. He is describing the trial of Warren Hastings. 
"Every step in the proceedings," he says, "carried the 25 
mind either backward through many troubled cen- 
turies to the days when the foundations of our constitu- 
tion were laid; or far away over boundless seas and 
deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, 
worshiping strange gods, and writing strange char- 30 



438 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

acters from right to left." The odd triviaUty of the last 
detail, its unworthiness of the sentiment of the passage, 
leaves the reader checked; what sets out as a fine stroke 
of imagination dwindles down to a sort of literary con- 
5 ceit. And so in other places, even where the writer is 
most deservedly admired for gorgeous picturesque effect, 
we feel that it is only the literary picturesque, a kind of 
infinitely glorified newspaper reporting. Compare, for 
instance, the most imaginative piece to be found in any 

10 part of Macaulay's writings with that sudden and lovely 
apostrophe in Carlyle, after describing the bloody hor- 
rors that followed the fall of the Bastille in 1789: — "O 
evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall 
slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old 

15 women spinning in cottages; on ships far out in the 
silent main; on balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where 
high-rouged dames of the Palace are even now dancing 
with double-jacketed Hussar-officers; — and also on this 
roaring Hell-porch of a Hotel de Ville!" Who does not 

20 feel in this the breath of poetic inspiration, and how 
different it is from the mere composite of the rhetorician's 
imagination, assiduously working to order? 

This remark is no disparagement of Macaulay's 
genius, but a classification of it. We are interrogating 

25 our own impressions, and asking ourselves among what 
kind of writers he ought to be placed. Rhetoric is a 
good and worthy art, and rhetorical authors are often 
more useful, more instructive, more really respectable 
than poetical authors. But it is to be said that Macaulay 

30 as a rhetorician will hardly be placed in the first rank 



MACAULAY 439 

by those who have studied both him and the great 
masters. Once more, no amount of embelhshment or 
emphasis or brilKant figure suffices to produce this in- 
tense effect of agitation rigorously restrained; nor can 
any beauty of decoration be in the least a substitute for 5 
that touching and penetrative music which is made in 
prose by the repressed trouble of grave and high souls. 
There is a certain music, we do not deny, in Macaulay, 
but it is the music of a man everlastingly playing for us 
rapid solos on a silver trumpet, never the swelling dia- 10 
pasons of the organ, and never the deep ecstasies of the 
four magic strings. That so sensible a man as Ma- 
caulay should keep clear of the modern abomination of 
dithyrambic prose, that rank and sprawling weed of 
speech, was natural enough; but then the effects which 15 
we miss in him, and which, considering how strong the 
literary faculty in him really was, we are almost aston- 
ished to miss, are not produced by dithyramb but by 
repression. Of course the answer has been already 
given; Macaulay, powerful and vigorous as he was, had 20 
no agitation, no wonder, no tumult of spirit, to repress. 
The world was spread out clear before him; he read it 
as plainly and as certainly as he read his books; life was 
all an affair of direct categoricals. 

This was at least one secret of those hard modulations 25 
and shallow cadences. How poor is the rhythm of 
Macaulay's prose, we only realize by going with his 
periods fresh in our ear to some true master of harmony. 
It is not worth while to quote passages from an author 
who is in everybody's library, and Macaulay is always 30 



440 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

so much like himself that almost any one page will serve 
for an illustration exactly as well as any other. Let 
any one turn to his character of Somers, for whom he 
had much admiration, and then turn to Clarendon's 

5 character of Falkland; — "a person of such prodigious 
parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable 
sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and 
obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of 
that primitive simplicity and mtegrity of life, that if 

10 there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed 
civil war than that single loss, it must be most infamous 
and execrable to all posterity." Now Clarendon is not 
a great writer, nor even a good writer, for he is prolix 
and involved, yet we see that even Clarendon, when he 

15 comes to a matter in which his heart is engaged, be- 
comes sweet and harmonious in his rhythm. If we turn 
to a prose writer of the very first place, we are instantly 
conscious of a still greater difference. How flashy and 
shallow Macaulay's periods seem as we listen to the fine 

20 ground base that roHs in the melody of the following 
passage of Burke's, and it is taken from one of the least 
ornate of all his pieces : — 

"You wall not, we tnist, believe, that, born in a civilized country, 
formed to gentle manners, trained in a rnerciful religion, and living 

25 in enlightened and polished times, where even foreign hostility is 
softened from its original sternness, we could have thought of 
letting loose upon you, our late beloved brethren, these fierce 
tribes of savages and cannibals, in whom the traces of human na- 
ture are effaced by ignorance and barbarity. We rather wished 

30 to have joined with you in bringing gradually that unhappy part 
of mankind into civility, order, piety, and virtuous disciphne, than 



MACAULAY 44I 

to have confirmed their evil habits and increased their natural 
ferocity by fleshing them in the slaughter of you, whom our wiser 
and better ancestors had sent into the wilderness with the express 
view of introducing, along with our holy reUgion, its humane and 
charitable manners. We do not hold that all things are lawful 5 
in war. We should think every barbarity, in fire, in wasting, in 
murders, in tortures, and other cruelties, too horrible and too full 
of turpitude for Christian mouths to utter or ears to hear, if done 
at our instigation, by those who we know will make war thus if 
they make it at all, to be, to all intents and purposes, as if done 10 
by ourselves. We clear ourselves to you our brethren, to the 
present age, and to future generations, to our king and our coun- 
try, and to Europe, which, as a spectator, beholds this tragic scene, 
of every part or share in adding this last and worst of evils to the 
inevitable mischiefs of a civil war. 1 5 

" We do not call you rebels and traitors. We do not call for 
the vengeance of the crown against you. We do not know how 
to qualify milHons of our countrymen, contending with one heart 
for an admission to privileges which we have ever thought our 
own happiness and honor, by odious and unworthy names. On 20 
the contrary, we highly revere the principles on which you act, 
though we lament some of their effects. Armed as you are, we 
embrace you, as our friends and as our brethren by the best and 
dearest ties of relation." 

It may be said that there is a patent injustice in com- 25 
paring the prose of a historian criticising or describing 
great events at second hand, with the prose of a states- 
man taking active part in great events, fired by the pas- 
sion of a present conflict, and stimulated by the vivid in- 
terest of undetermined issues. If this be a well grounded 3° 
plea, and it may be so, then of course it excludes a con- 
trast not only with Burke, but also with Bolingbroke, 
whose fine manners and polished gayety give us a keen 



442 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

sense of the grievous garishness of Macaulay. If we 
may not initiate a comparison between Macaulay and 
great actors on the stage of affairs, at least there can be 
no objection to the introduction of Southey as a standard 
5 of comparison. Southey was a man of letters pure and 
simple, and it is worth remarking that Macaulay him- 
self admitted that he found so great a charm in Southey's 
style, as nearly always to read it with pleasure, even 
when Southey was talking nonsense. Now, take any 

lo page of the Lije of Nelson or the Life of Wesley; con- 
sider how easy, smooth, natural, and winning is the 
diction and the rise and fall of the sentence, and yet 
how varied the rhythm and how nervous the phrases; 
and then turn to a page of Macaulay, and wince under 

15 its stamping emphasis, its overcolored tropes, its ex- 
aggerated expressions, its unlovely staccato. Southey's 
History of the Peninsular War is now dead, but if any 
of my readers has a copy on his highest shelves, I would 
venture to ask him to take down the third volume, and 

20 read the concluding pages, of which Coleridge used to 
say that they were the finest specimen of historic eulogy 
he had ever read in English, adding with forgivable 
hyperbole, that they were more to the Duke's fame and 
glory than a campaign. " Foresight and enterprise with 

25 our commander went hand in hand; he never advanced 
but so as to be sure of his retreat; and never retreated 
but in such an attitude as to impose upon a superior 
enemy," and so on through the sum of Wellington's 
achievements. ''There was something more precious 

30 than these, more to be desired than the high and endur- 



IVIACAULAY 443 

ing fame which he had secured by his mihtary achieve- 
ments, the satisfaction of thinking to what end those 
achievements had been directed; that they were for the 
dehverance of two most injured and grievously oppressed 
nations; for the safety, honor, and welfare of his own 5 
country; and for the general interests of Europe and of 
the civilized world. His campaigns were sanctified by 
the cause; they were sullied by no cruelties, no crimes; 
the chariot wheels of his triumphs have been followed 
by no curses; his laurels are entwined with the amaranths 10 
of righteousness, and upon his deathbed he might re- 
member his victories among his good works." 

With this exquisite modulation still delighting the ear, 
we open Macaulay's Essays and stumble on such sen- 
tences as this: "That Tickell should have been guilty 15 
of a villany seems to us highly improbable. That Ad- 
dison should have been guilty of a villany seems to us 
highly improbable. But that these two men should 
have conspired together to commit a villany seems to 
us improbable in a tenfold degree." ^ ^ fnapdv, Kal irafi- 20 
fiiapbv, Kalfjt,iap(I)TaTov\ Surely this is the very burlesque 
and travesty of a style. Yet it is a characteristic pas- 
sage. It would be easy to find a thousand examples of 
the same vicious workmanship, and it would be difficult 
to find a page in which these cut and disjointed sen- 25 
tences are not the type and mode of the prevailing 
rhythm. 

What is worse than want of depth and fineness of in- 
tonation in a period is all gross excess of color, because 
excess of color is connected with graver faults in the 30 



444 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

region of the intellectual conscience. Macaulay is a 
constant sinner in this respect. The wine of truth is in 
his cup a brandied draft, a hundred degrees above 
proof, and he too often replenishes the lamp of knowl- 
5 edge with naphtha instead of fine oil. It is not that he has 
a spontaneous passion for exuberant decoration, which 
he would have shared with more than one of the greatest 
names in literature. On the contrary, we feel that the 
exaggerated words and dashing sentences are the fruit 

lo of deliberate travail, and the petulance or the irony of 
his speech is mostly due to a driving predilection for 
strong effects. His memory, his directness, his aptitude 
for forcing things into firm outline, and giving them a 
sharply defined edge, — these and other singular talents 

15 of his all lent themselves to this intrepid and indefati- 
gable pursuit of effect. And the most disagreeable 
feature is that Macaulay was so often content with an 
effect of an essentially vulgar kind, offensive to taste, 
discordant to the fastidious ear, and worst of all, at 

20 enmity with the whole spirit of truth. By vulgar we 
certainly do not mean homely, which marks a wholly 
different quality. No writer can be more homely than 
Mr. Carlyle, alike in his choice of particulars to dwell 
upon, and in the terms or images in which he describes 

25 or illustrates them, but there is also no writer further 
removed from vulgarity. Nor do we mean that Ma- 
caulay too copiously enriches the tongue with infusion 
from any Doric dialect. For such raciness he had little 
taste. What we find in him is that quality which the 

30 French call brutal. The description, for instance, in 



MACAULAY 445 

the essay on Hallam, of the license of the Restoration, 
seems to us a coarse and vulgar picture, whose painter 
took the most garish colors he could find on his palette 
and laid them on in untempered crudity. And who is 
not sensible of the vulgarity and coarseness of the ac- 5 
count of Boswell? "If he had not been a great fool, 
he would not have been a great writer ... he was 
a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb," and so forth, in 
which the shallowness of the analysis of Boswell's char- 
acter matches the puerile rudeness of the terms. Here, 10 
again, is a sentence about Montesquieu. "The English 
at that time," Macaulay says of the middle of the eight- 
eenth century, "considered a Frenchman who talked 
about constitutional checks and fundamental laws as a 
prodigy not less astonishing than the learned pig or 15 
musical infant." And he then goes on to describe the 
author of one of the most important books that ever 
were written as " specious but shallow, studious of effect, 
indifferent to truth — the Hvely President," and so forth, 
stirring in any reader who happens to know Montes- 20 
quieu's influence, a singular amazement. We are not 
concerned with the judgment upon Montesquieu, nor 
with the truth as to contemporary English opinion about 
him, but a writer who devises an antithesis to such a 
man as Montesquieu in learned pigs and musical in- 25 
fants, deliberately condescends not merely, to triviality 
or levity but to flat vulgarity of thought, to something 
of mean and ignoble association. Though one of the 
most common, this is not Macaulay's only sin in the 
same unfortunate direction. He too frequently resorts 30 



446 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

to vulgar gaudiness. For example, there is in one place 
a certain description of an alleged practice of Addison's. 
Swift had said of Esther Johnson that "whether from 
her easiness in general, or from her indifference to per- 
5 sons, or from her despair of mending them, or from the 
same practice which she most liked in Mr. Addison, I 
cannot determine; but when she saw any of the company 
very warm in a wrong opinion, she was more inclined 
to confirm them in it than to oppose them. It pre- 

lo vented noise, she said, and saved time." Let us be- 
hold what a picture Macaulay draws on the strength 
of this passage. "If his first attempts to set a presum- 
ing dunce right were ill-received," Macaulay says of 
Addison, "he changed his tone, 'assented with civil 

IS leer,' and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and deeper 
into absurdity." To compare this transformation of 
the simplicity of the original into the grotesque heat and 
overcharged violence of the copy, is to see the homely 
maiden of a country village transformed into the painted 

20 fiaunter of the city. 

One more instance. We should be sorry to violate 
any sentiment of to aefxvbv about a man of Macaulay's 
genius, but what is a decorous term for a description 
of the doctrine of Lucretius's great poem, thrown in 

25 parenthetically, as the "silliest and meanest system of 
natural and moral philosophy"? Even disagreeable 
artifices of composition may be forgiven when they 
serve to vivify truth, to quicken or to widen the moral 
judgment, but Macaulay's hardy and habitual recourse 

30 to strenuous superlatives is fundamentally unscientific 



MACAULAY 447 

and untrue. There is no more instructive example in 
our literature than he, of the saying that the adjective is 
the enemy of the substantive. 

In 1837 Jeffrey saw a letter written by Macaulay to 
a common friend, and stating the reasons for preferring a 5 
literary to a political life. Jeffrey thought that his il- 
lustrious ally was wrong in the conclusion to which he 
came. "As to the tranquillity of an author's life," he 
said, "I have no sort of faith in it. And as to fame, if 
an author's is now and then more lasting, it is generally 10 
longer withheld, and except in a few rare cases it is of 
a less pervading or elevating description. A great poet 
or a great original writer is above all other glory. But 
who would give much for such a glory as Gibbon's? 
Besides, I believe it is in the inward glow and pride of 15 
consciously influencing the destinies of mankind, much 
more than in the sense of personal reputation, that the 
delight of either poet or statesman chiefly consists." 
And Gibbon had at least the advantage of throwing 
himself into a controversy destined to endure for cen- 20 
turies. He, moreover, was specifically a historian, while 
Macaulay has been prized less as a historian proper, 
than as a master of literary art. Now a man of letters, 
in an age of battle and transition like our own, fades into 
an ever-deepening distance, unless he has while he 25 
writes that touching and impressive quality, — the pre- 
sentiment of the eve; a feeling of the difficulties and in- 
terests that will engage and distract mankind on the 
morrow. Nor can it be enough for endiuring fame in 



448 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

any age merely to throw a golden halo round the secu- 
larity of the hour, or to make glorious the narrowest limi- 
tations of the passing day. If we think what a changed 
sense is already given to criticism, what a different con- 
5 ception now presides over history, how many problems 
on which he was silent are now the familiar puzzles of 
even superficial readers, we cannot help feeling that the 
eminent man whose life we are all about to read, is the 
hero of a past which is already remote, and that he did 
10 Httle to make men better fitted to face a present of which, 
close as it was to him, he seems hardly to have dreamed. 



ARNOLD 

[Matthew Arnold, son of Dr. Thomas Arnold, the famous 
headmaster of Rugby, was born at Laleham in 1822. Arnold's 
school days were nearly all passed at Rugby, where he wrote his 
prize poem, Alaric at Rome (1840) He also won the Newdi- 
gate prize at Oxford with a poem called Cromwell. In March, 
1845 ^^ ^^^ elected a fellow of Oriel, and in 1847 he was ap- 
pointed secretary to the Marquis of Lansdowne, who, four years 
later, secured for Arnold an inspectorship of schools. This posi- 
tion he held until 18S6. From 1857 to 1867, Arnold was Pro- 
fessor of Poetry at Oxford. His lectures On Translating Homer 
and On the Study of Celtic Literature were published in 1 861-1862 
and 1867. He visited America twice, once in 1883- 1884 and again 
in 1886. Arnold died in 1888. A complete edition of his poetry 
appeared in 1885. His prose writings include: Essays in Crit- 
icism, first series (1865); Culture and Anarchy (1869); Saint 
Paul and Prostestantism (1870) ; Literature and Dogma (1873) » 
Mixed Essays (1879); Discourses in America (1885); Essays in 
Criticism, second series (1888).] 

When Matthew Arnold first delivered his lecture on 
Emerson he wrote home: "I have given him praise 
which in England will be thought excessive, probably; 
but then I have a very, very deep feeling for him." 
Sympathy with Emerson, Arnold could not have found 
difficult to possess. The soul of Emerson's message 
is conduct, which for Arnold is three-fourths of life. 
This of itself implies the large spiritual fellowship there 
was between the American seer and his English critic. 
We cannot, therefore, question the deliberateness and 
sincerity of the high opinion which finds expression in 
the second half of the present essay. 
Prose — 29 449 



450 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Arnold reaches his final positive judgment through 
a series of negations. Emerson, he says, is great 
neither as a poet, a man of letters, a philosopher, nor 
as a spectator of life. He is great "as a friend and 
aider of those who would live in the spirit." His great- 
ness, moreover, is pervaded by a "serene, beautiful 
temper," which holds fast to "happiness and hope;" 
a temper, too, which, by giving to Emerson's gospel an 
"invaluable virtue," makes it "the most important 
work done in prose during the present century." 

These judgments are the result of an application to 
Emerson's writings of certain well-known ideals and 
methods of criticism which Arnold habitually employed 
and to which brief reference must here be made. His 
expressed aim is to arrive at a "real estimate," by which 
he means the estimate of time and nature; and to ac- 
complish his aim he makes use of a definite method of 
criticism. Emerson's various literary performances are 
successively measured by certain "highest standards," 
or acknowledged classical writers. Tested in this 
way, Emerson's real greatness becomes evident only 
when we place him beside Marcus Aurelius. And not 
only in the larger divisions of the subject is the method 
conspicuous; it shows itself also in the frequent contrasts 
of Carlyle and Emerson, and in the comparison of Emer- 
son with Hawthorne, and again with FrankHn. 

Preference for the concrete over the abstract, for the 
relative over the absolute, is a phase of Arnold's method, 
and accounts for the large number of quotations in his 
essays. He defines by illustrations, not by definitions. 
"The true prose," he says, "is Attic prose;" and At- 
tic prose becomes the norm of style. 

Another phase of his criticism is the practice of con- 
densing an estimate of a writer into a single sentence 
or phrase, and of making this crystalHzed judgment do 
service whenever the writer's work is called in question. 



ARNOLD 451 

Emerson, in the essay before us, on the positive side is 
always "the friend and aider of those who would live in 
the spirit," — a formula repeated as often as Emerson's 
true value is reckoned with. 

In his appraisal of Emerson's style, Arnold adopts 
the same method. A great prose style, he says, shows 
itself in " the whole tissue of work . . . regarded as a com- 
position for literary purposes." Emerson's style, meas- 
ured by this standard, falls short; it has no evolution, 
no "whole tissue." 

Finally, Arnold's estimate of Emerson's work as a 
contribution to the world is derived from his ideal of 
literature as a test of that work. "The end and aim of 
all Hterature," says Arnold, "is a criticism of Hfe." 
Emerson's is the most important work done in prose 
during the nineteenth century because it most perfectly 
accomplishes the purpose of literature, — criticism of life. 

Arnold's style in this essay is typical of his manner in 
criticism, though the lecture form is frankly obtrusive. 
The memorable introduction on the " voices " at Oxford 
— a passage hardly surpassed anywhere else in Arnold — 
together with the concluding comparison between Em- 
erson and Frankhn, is not subordinated to the "tissue 
of the whole." Obvious faults arising from the lecture 
form, however, do not materially lessen the charm com- 
municated by a prose that possesses the "classic" qual- 
ities of "lucidity, measure, propriety." Arnold's style 
has also urbanity, which is manifested in a gracious, 
refined, untrammeled, and always serenely confident 
manner of expression and thought. Serene confidence, 
in truth, occasionally becomes priggishness and pose; 
and wherever this attitude shows itself the style of course 
loses its most winning characteristic. This quality, 
which one feels in the best conversation and which we 
have called urbanity, is sometimes responsible in the 
case of Arnold for the further defects of repetition, diffuse- 



452 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

ness and verbal narrowness. But after these deductions 
have been made, there remains a style distinctive for 
restraint and lucidity, a style fashioned after the pattern 
of Greek prose which, better than any other prose in 
the world, combines richness of content with beauty of 
form. 



EMERSON 

Forty years ago, when I was an undergraduate at 
Oxford, voices were in the air there which haunt my 
memory still. Happy the man who in that susceptible 
season of youth hears such voices! they are a possession 
5 to him for ever. No such voices as those which we heard 
in our youth at Oxford are sounding there now. Ox- 
ford has more criticism now, more knowledge, more 
light; but such voices as those of our youth it has no 
longer. The name of Cardinal Newman is a great name 

lo to the imagination still; his genius and his style are still 
things of power. But he is over eighty years old; he is 
in the Oratory at Birmingham; he has adopted, for the 
doubts and difficulties which beset men's minds to-day, 
a solution which, to speak frankly, is impossible. Forty 

15 years ago he was in the very prime of life; he was close 
at hand to us at Oxford; he was preaching in St. Mary's 
pulpit every Sunday; he seemed about to transform and 
to renew what was for us the most national and natural 
institution in the world, the Church of England. Who 

20 could resist the charm of that spiritual apparition, glid- 
ing in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of 
St. Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and then, in the most 



EMERSON 453 

entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words 
and thoughts which were a religious music, — subtle, 
sweet, mournful? I seem to hear him still, saying: 
" After the fever of life, after wearinesses and sicknesses, 
fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, 5 
strugghng and succeeding; after all the changes and 
chances of this troubled, unhealthy state, — at length 
comes death, at length the white throne of God, at 
length the beatific vision." Or, if we followed him back 
to his seclusion at Littlemore, that dreary village by the lo 
London road, and to the house of retreat and the church 
which he built there, — a mean house such as Paul might 
have lived in when he was tent making at Ephesus, a 
church plain and thinly sown with worshipers, — who 
could resist him there either, welcoming back to the se- 15 
vere joys of church fellowship, and of daily worship 
and prayer, the firstlings of a generation which had well- 
nigh forgotten them? Again I seem to hear him: "The 
season is chill and dark, and the breath of the morning 
is damp, and worshipers are few; but all this befits those 20 
who are by their profession penitents and mourners, 
watchers and pilgrims. More dear to them that loneli- 
ness, more cheerful that severity, and more bright that 
gloom, than all those aids and appliances of luxury by 
which men nowadays attempt to make prayer less dis- 25 
agreeable to them. True faith does not covet comforts; 
they who realize that awful day, when they shall see Him 
face to face whose eyes are as a flame of fire, will as 
little bargain to pray pleasantly now as they will think 
of doing so then." 30 



454 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Somewhere or other I have spoken of those "last en- 
chantments of the Middle Age which Oxford sheds 
around us, and here they were! But there were other 
voices sounding in our ear besides Newman's.- There 
5 was the puissant voice of Carlyle; so sorely strained, 
over-used, and misused since, but then fresh, compara- 
tively sound, and reaching our hearts with true, pathetic 
eloquence. Who can forget the emotion of receiving in 
its first freshness such a sentence as that sentence of Car- 
lo lyle upon Edward Irving, then just dead: " Scotland sent 
him forth a herculean man; our mad Babylon wore and 
wasted him with all her engines, — and it took her twelve 
years!" A greater voice still, — the greatest voice of ihe 
century, — came to us in those youthful years through 
IS Carlyle: the voice of Goethe. To this day, — such is the 
force of youthful associations, — I read the Wilhelm 
Meister with more pleasure in Carlyle's translation than 
in the original. The large, liberal view of human life in 
Wilhelm Meister, how novel it was to the Englishman in 
20 those days! and it was salutary, too, and educative for 
him, doubtless, as well as novel. But what moved us 
most in Wilhelm Meister was that which, after all, will 
always move the young most, — the poetry, the eloquence. 
Never, surely, was Carlyle's prose so beautiful and pure 
25 as in his rendering of the Youths' dirge over Mignon! — 
"Well is our treasure now laid up, the fair image of the 
past. Here sleeps it in the marble, undecaying; in your 
hearts, also, it lives, it works. Travel, travel, back into 
life! Take along with you this holy earnestness, for 
30 earnestness alone makes life eternity." Here we had the 



EMERSON 455 

voice of the great Goethe;— not the stiff, and hindered, 
and frigid, and factitious Goethe who speaks to us too 
often from those sixty volumes of his, but of the great 
Goethe, and the true one. 

And besides those voices, there came to us in that old 5 
Oxford time a voice also from this side of the Atlantic, — 
a clear and pure voice, which for my ear, at any rate, 
brought a strain as new, and moving, and unforgettable, 
as the strain of Newman, or Carlyle, or Goethe. Mr. 
Lowell has well described the apparition of Emerson to lo 
your young generation here, in that distant time of which 
I am speaking, and of his workings upon them. He was 
your Newman, your man of soul and genius visible to you 
in the flesh, speaking to your bodily ears, a present ob- 
ject for your heart and imagination. That is surely the 15 
most potent of all influences! nothing can come up to it. 
To us at Oxford Emerson was but a voice speaking from 
three thousand miles away. But so well he spoke, that 
from that time forth Boston Bay and Concord were 
names invested to my ear with a sentiment akin to that 20 
which invests for me the names of Oxford and of Weimar; 
and snatches of Emerson's strain fixed themselves in 
my mind as imperishably as any of the eloquent words 
which I have been just now quoting. "Then dies the 
man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, 25 
poetry, and science, as they have died already in a 
thousand thousand men." "What Plato has thought, 
he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at 
any time has befallen any man, he can understand." 
"Trust thyself! every heart vibrates to that iron string. 30 



456 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

Accept the place the Divine Providence has found for 
you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection 
of events. Great men have always done so, and con- 
fided themselves childlike to the genius of their age; 
5 betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring 
at their heart, working through their hands, predomi- 
nating in all their being. And we are now men, and 
must accept in the highest spirit the same transcendent 
destiny; and not pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing 

10 before a revolution, but redeemers and benefactors, pious 
aspirants to be noble clay plastic under the Almighty 
effort, let us advance and advance on chaos and the 
dark!" These lofty sentences of Emerson, and a hun- 
dred others of Hke strain, T never have lost out of my 

15 memory; I never can lose them. 

At last I find myself in Emerson's own country, and 
looking upon Boston Bay. Naturally I revert to the 
friend of my youth. It is not always pleasant to ask 
oneself questions about the friends of one's youth; 

20 they cannot always well support it. Carlyle, for instance, 
in my judgment, cannot well support such a return 
upon him. Yet we should make the return; we should 
part with our illusions, we should know the truth. When 
I come to this country, where Emerson now counts for 

25 so much, and where such high claims are made for him, 
I pull myself together, and ask myself what the truth 
about this object of my youthful admiration really is. 
Improper elements often come into our estimate of men. 
We have lately seen a German critic make Goethe the 

30 greatest of all poets, because Germany is now the greatest 



EMERSON 457 

of military powers, and wants a poet to match. Then, 
too, America is a young country; and young countries, 
like young persons, are apt sometimes to evince in their 
literary judgments a want of scale and measure. I set 
myself, therefore, resolutely to come at a real estimate 5 
of Emerson, and with a leaning even to strictness rather 
than to indulgence. That is the safer course. Time has 
no indulgence; any veils of illusion which we may have 
left around an object because we loved it, Time is sure 
to strip away. ' 10 

I was reading the other day a notice of Emerson by a 
serious and interesting American critic. Fifty or sixty 
passages in Emerson's poems, says this critic, — who had 
doubtless himself been nourished on Emerson's writ- 
ings, and held them justly dear, — fifty or sixty passages 15 
from Emerson's poems have already entered into Eng- 
Hsh speech as matter of familiar and universally current 
quotation. Here is a specimen of that personal sort of 
estimate which, for my part, even in speaking of authors 
dear to me, I would try to avoid- What is the kind of 20 
phrase of which we may fairly say that it has entered 
into English speech as matter of famihar quotation? 
Such a phrase, surely, as the " Patience on a monument" 
of Shakespeare; as the ''Darkness visible" of Milton; 
as the "Where ignorance is bliss" of Gray. Of not one 25 
single passage in Emerson's poetry can it be truly said 
that it has become a familiar quotation Hke phrases of 
this kind. It is not enough that it should be familiar 
to his admirers, familiar in New England., familiar even 



458 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

throughout the United States; it must be familiar to all 
readers and lovers of English poetry. Of not more than 
one or two passages in Emerson's poetry can it, I think, 
be truly said, that they stand ever-present in the memory 
5 of even many lovers of English poetry. A great number 
of passages from his poetry are no doubt perfectly fa- 
mihar to the mind and lips of the critic whom I have 
mentioned, and perhaps a wide circle of American 
readers. But this is a very different thing from being 

10 matter of universal quotation, like the phrases of the 
legitimate poets. 

And, in truth, one of the legitimate poets, Emerson, 
in my opinion, is not. His poetry is interesting, it makes 
one think; but it is not the poetry of one of the born 

15 poets. I say it of him with reluctance, although I am 
sure that he would have said it of himself; but I say it 
with reluctance, because I dislike giving pain to his ad- 
mirers, and because all my own wish, too, is to say of 
him what is favorable. But I regard myself, not as 

20 speaking to please Emerson's admirers, not as speaking 
to please myself; but rather, I repeat, as communing with 
Time and Nature concerning the productions of this 
beautiful and rare spirit, and as resigning what of him is 
by their unalterable decree touched with caducity, in 

25 order the better to mark and secure that in him which 
is immortal. 

Milton says that poetry ought to be simple, sensuous, 
impassioned. Well, Emerson's poetry is seldom either 
simple, or sensuous, or impassioned. In general it lacks 

30 directness; it lacks concreteness; it lacks energy. His 



10 



EMERSON 459 

grammar is often embarrassed; in particular, the want 
of clearly-marked, distinction between the subject and 
the object of his sentence is a frequent cause of obscurity 
in him. A poem which shall be a plain, forcible, in- 
evitable whole he hardly ever produces. Such good 
work as the noble lines graven on the Concord Monu- 
ment is the exception with him; such ineffective work as 
the Fourth of July Ode or the Boston Hymn is the rule. 
Even passages and single lines of thorough plainness 
and commanding force are rare in his poetry. They 
exist, of course; but when we meet with them they give 
us a slight shock of surprise, so little has Emerson ac- 
customed us to them. Let me have the pleasure of 
quoting one or two of these exceptional passages: 

♦' So nigh is grandeur to our dust, ^5 

So near is God to man, 
When Duty whispers low. Thou must, 
The youth repUes, / can." 

Or again this: 

« Though love repine and reason chafe, 20 

There came a voice without reply : 
''Tis man's perdition to be safe, 
When for the truth he ought to die.' " 

Excellent! but how seldom do we get from him a 
strain blown so clearly and firmly ! Take another passage 25 
where his strain has not only clearness, it has also grace 
and beauty: 



460 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

" And ever, when the happy child 
In May beholds the blooming -wild, 
And hears in heaven the bluebird sing, 
'Onward,' he cries, 'your baskets bring 1 
r In the next field is air more mild. 

And in yon hazy west is Eden's balmier spring.' " 

In the style and cadence here there is a reminiscence, 
I think, of Gray; at any rate the pureness, grace, and 
beauty of these Hnes are worthy even of Gray. But 

10 Gray holds his high rank as a poet, not merely by the 
beauty and grace of passages in his poems; not merely 
by a diction generally pure in an age of impure diction: 
he holds it, above all, by the power and skill with which 
the evolution of his poems is conducted. Here is his 

15 grand superiority to Collins, whose diction in his best 
poem, the Ode to Evening, is purer than Gray's; but 
then the Ode to Evening is like a river which loses itself 
in the sand, whereas Gray's best poems have an evolu- 
tion sure and satisfying. Emerson's May-Day, from 

20 which I just now quoted, has no real evolution at all; 
it is a series of observations. And, in general, his poems 
have no evolution. Take, for example, his Titmouse. 
Here he has an excellent subject; and his observation 
of Nature, moreover, is always marvelously close and 

25 fine. But compare what he makes of his meeting with 
his titmouse with what Cowper or Burns makes of the 
like kind of incident! One never quite arrives at learn- 
ing what the titmouse actually did for him at all, though 
one feels a strong interest and desire to learn it; but one 

30 is reduced to guessing, and cannot be quite sure that 



EMERSON 461 

after all one has guessed right. He is not plain and con- 
crete enough, — in other words, not poet enough, — to be 
able to tell us. And a failure of this kind goes through 
almost all his verse, keeps him amid symbolism and 
allusion and the fringes of things, and, in spite of his spir- 5 
itual power, deeply impairs his poetic value. Through 
the inestimable virtue of concreteness, a simple poem 
like The Bridge of Longfellow, or the School Days of 
Mr. Whittier, is of more poetic worth, perhaps, than 
all the verse of Emerson. 10 

I do not, then, place Emerson among the great poets. 
But I go further, and say that I do not place him among 
the great writers, the great men of letters. Who are the 
great men of letters ? They are men like Cicero, Plato, 
Bacon, Pascal, Swift, Voltaire,^ — writers with, in the first 15 
place, a genius and instinct for style; writers whose 
prose is by a kind of native necessity true and sound. 
Now the style of Emerson, like the style of his tran- 
scendentalist friends and of the Dial so continually, — the 
style of Emerson is capable of falling into a strain like 20 
this, which I take from the beginning of his Essay 07i 
Love: "Every soul is a celestial being to every other 
soul. The heart has its sabbaths and jubilees, in which 
the world appears as a hymeneal feast, and all natural 
sounds and the circle of the seasons are erotic odes and 25 
dances." Emerson altered this sentence in the later 
editions. Like Wordsworth, he was in later life fond 
of altering; and in general his later alterations, like those 
of Wordsworth, are not improvements. He softened 
the passage in question, however, though without really 30 



462 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

mending it. I quote it in its original and strongly- 
marked form. Arthur Stanley used to relate that about 
the year 1840, being in conversation with some Amer- 
icans in quarantine at Malta, and thinking to please 
5 them, he declared his warm admiration for Emerson's 
Essays, then recently published. However, the Ameri- 
cans shook their heads, and told him that for home 
taste Emerson was decidedly too greeny. We will hope, 
for their sakes, that the sort of thing they had in their 

10 heads was such writing as I have just quoted. Un- 
sound it is, indeed, and in a style almost impossible to a 
born man of letters. 

It is a curious thing, that quality of style which marks 
the great writer, the born man of letters. It resides in 

15 the whole tissue of one's work, and of his work regarded 
as a composition for literary purposes. Brilliant and 
powerful passages in a man's writings do not prove his 
possession of it; it Hes in their whole tissue. Emerson 
has passages of noble and pathetic eloquence, such as 

20 those which I quoted at the beginning; he has passages 
of shrewd and felicitous wit; he has crisp epigram; he 
has passages of exquisitely touched observation of na- 
ture. Yet he is not a great writer; his style has not the 
requisite wholeness of good .tissue. Even Carlyle is not, 

25 in my judgment, a great writer. He has surpassingly 
powerful qualities of expression, far more powerful than 
Emerson's, and reminding one of the gifts of expression 
of the great poets, — of even Shakespeare himself. What 
Emerson so admirably says of Carlyle's "devouring eyes 

30 and portraying hand," "those thirsty eyes, those por- 



EMERSON 463 

trait-eating, portrait-painting eyes of thine, those fatal 
perceptions," is thoroughly true. What a description 
is Carlyle's of the first publisher of Sartor Resartus, "to 
whom the idea of a new edition of Sartor is frightful, or 
rather ludicrous, unimaginable;" of this poor Fraser, in 5 
whose "wonderful world of Tory pamphleteers, conser- 
vative Younger-brothers, Regent Street loungers. Crock- 
ford gamblers, Irish Jesuits, drunken reporters, and 
miscellaneous unclean persons (whom niter and much 
soap will not wash clean), not a soul has expressed the 10 
smallest wish that way!" What a portrait, again, of 
the well-beloved John SterHng! "One, and the best, of 
a small class extant here, who, nigh drowning in a black 
wreck of Infidelity (lighted up by some glare of Radi- 
calism only, now growing dim too), and about to perish, 15 
saved themselves into a Coleridgian Shovel-Hattedness." 
What touches in the invitation of Emerson to London! 
"You shall see blockheads by the million; Pickwick him- 
self shall be visible, — innocent young Dickens, reserved 
for a questionable fate. The great Wordsworth shall talk 20 
till you yourself pronounce him to be a bore. Southey's 
complexion is still healthy mahogany brown, with a 
fleece of white hair, and eyes that seem running at full 
gallop. Leigh Hunt, man of genius in the shape of a 
cockney, is my near neighbor, with good humor and no 25 
common sense; old Rogers with his pale head, white, 
bare, and cold as snow, with those large blue eyes, cruel, 
sorrowful, and that sardonic shelf chin." How inimi- 
table it all is! And finally, for one must not go on for 
ever, this version of a London Sunday, with the public 30 



464 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

houses closed during the hours of divine service! "It 
is silent Sunday; the populace not yet admitted to their 
beer-shops, till the respectabilities conclude their rubric 
mummeries, — a much more audacious feat than beer." 
5 Yet even Carlyle is not, in my judgment, to be called 
a great writer; one cannot think of ranking him with 
men like Cicero and Plato and Swift and Voltaire. 
Emerson freely promises to Carlyle immortality for his 
histories. They will not have it. Why? Because the 

10 materials furnished to him by that devouring eye of his, 
and that portraying hand, were not wrought in and sub- 
dued by him to what his work, regarded as a compo- 
sition for Hterary purposes, required. Occurring in con- 
versation, breaking out in familiar correspondence, they 

15 are magnificent, inimitable; nothing more is required 
of them; thus thrown out anyhow, they serve their turn 
and fulfill their function. And, therefore, I should not 
wonder if really Carlyle lived, in the long run, by such 
an invaluable record as that correspondence between him 

20 and Emerson, of which we owe the publication to Mr. 
Charles Norton, — by this and not by his works, as John- 
son lives in Boswell, not by his works. For Carlyle's 
sallies, as the staple of a literary work, become wearisome; 
and as time more and more applies to Carlyle's works 

25 its stringent test, this will be felt more and more. Shake- 
speare, Moliere, Swift, — they, too, had, like Carlyle, 
the devouring eye and the portraying hand. But they 
are great literary masters, they are supreme wTiters, be- 
cause they knew how to work into a Hterary composition 

30 their materials, and to subdue them to the purposes of 



EMERSON 465 

literary effect. Carlyle is too willful for this, too turbid, 
too vehement. 

You will think I deal in nothing but negatives. I 
have been saying that Emerson is not one of the great 
poets, the great writers.. He has not their quality of 5 
style. He is, however, the propounder of a philosophy. 
The Platonic dialogues afford us the example of ex- 
quisite literary form and treatment given to philosoph- 
ical ideas. Plato is at once a great literary man and a 
great philosopher. If we speak carefully, we cannot 10 
call Aristotle or Spinoza or Kant great literary men, or 
their productions great literary works. But their work 
is arranged with such constructive power that they build 
a philosophy, and are justly called great philosophical 
wTiters. Emerson cannot, I think, be called with justice 15 
a great philosophical writer. He cannot build; his 
arrangement of philosophical ideas has no progress in 
it, no evolution; he does not construct a philosophy. 
Emerson himself knew the defects of his method, or 
rather want of method, very well; indeed, he and Car- 20 
lyle criticise themselves and one another in a way which 
leaves little for any one else to do in the way of formu- 
lating their defects. Carlyle formulates perfectly the 
defects of his friend's poetic and literary production when 
he says of the Dial: "For me it is too ethereal, specu- 25 
lative, theoretic; I will have all things condense them- 
selves, take shape and body, if they are to have my 
sympathy." And, speaking of Emerson's Orations, he 
says: "I long to see some concrete Thing, some Event, 
Man's Life, American Forest, or piece of Creation, 30 
Prose — 30 



466 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

which this Emerson loves and wonders at, well Emer- 
sonized, — depictured by Emerson, filled with the life of 
Emerson, and cast forth from him, then to live by itself. 
If these Orations balk me of this, how profitable soever 
5 they may be for others, I will not love them." Emerson 
himself formulates perfectly the defect of his own philo- 
sophical productions when he speaks of his "formidable 
tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of 
bowlders." "Here I sit and read and write," he says 

lo again, "with very little system, and, as far as regards 
composition, with the most fragmentary result; para- 
graphs incomprehensible, each sentence an infinitely 
repellent particle." Nothing can be truer; and the work 
of a Spinoza or Kant, of the men who stand as great 

15 philosophical writers, does not proceed in this wise. 

Some people will tell you that Emerson's poetry, in- 
deed, is too abstract, and his philosophy too vague, 
but that his best work is his English Traits. The Eng- 
lish Traits are beyond question very pleasant reading. 

20 It is easy to praise them, easy to commend the author of 
them. But I insist on always trying Emerson's work by 
the highest standards. I esteem him too much to try 
his work by any other. Tried by the highest standards, 
and compared with the work of the excellent markers 

25 and recorders of the traits of human life, — of writers like 
Montaigne, La Bruyere, Addison, — the English Traits 
will not stand the comparison. Emerson's observation 
has not the disinterested quality of the observation of 
these masters. It is the observation of a man syste- 

30 matically benevolent, as Hawthorne's observation in Our 



EMERSON 467 

Old Home is the work of a man chagrined. Hawthorne's 
literary talent is of the first order. His subjects are gen- 
erally not to me subjects of the highest interest; but his 
literary talent is of the first order, the finest, I think, 
which America has yet produced, — finer, by much, than 5 
Emerson's. Yet Our Old Home is not a masterpiece 
any more than English Traits. In neither of them is the 
observer disinterested enough. The author's attitude 
in each of these cases can easily be understood and de- 
fended. Hawthorne was a sensitive man, so situated in 10 
England that he was perpetually in contact with the 
British Philistine; and the British Phihstine is a trying 
personage. Emerson's systematic benevolence comes 
from what he himself calls somewhere his "persistent 
optimism;" and his persistent optimism is the root of his 15 
greatness and the source of his charm. But still let us 
keep our literary conscience true, and judge every kind 
of Hterary work by the laws really proper to it. The 
kind of work attempted in the English Traits and in 
Our Old Home is work which cannot be done perfectly 20 
with a bias such as that given by Emerson's optimism or 
by Hawthorne's chagrin. Consequently, neither English 
Traits nor Our Old Home is a work of perfection in its 
kind. 

Not with the Miltons and Grays, not with the Platos 25 
and Spinozas, not with the Swifts and Voltaires, not with 
the Montaignes and Addisons, can we rank Emerson. 
His work of various kinds, when one compares it with 
the work done in a corresponding kind by these masters, 
fails to stand the comparison. No man could see this 30 



468 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

clearer than Emerson himself. It is hard not to feel 
despondency when we contemplate our failures and 
shortcomings: and Emerson, the least self-flattering and 
the most modest of men, saw so plainly what was lack- 
5 ing to him that he had his moments of despondency. 
"Alas, my friend," he writes in reply to Carlyle, who 
had exhorted him to creative work, — "Alas, my friend, 
I can do no such gay thing as you say. I do not belong 
to the poets, but only to a low department of literature, — 

10 the reporters; suburban men." He deprecated his 
friend's praise; praise "generous to a fault," he calls 
it; praise "generous to the shaming of me, — cold, fas- 
tidious, ebbing person that I am. Already in a former 
letter you had said too much good of my poor little arid 

15 book, which is as sand to my eyes. I can only say that 
I heartily wish the book were better; and I must try and 
deserve so much favor from the kind gods by a bolder 
and truer Hving in the months to come, — such as may 
perchance one day release and invigorate this cramp 

20 hand of mine. When I see how much work is to be done; 
what room for a poet, for any spiritualist, in this great, 
intelligent, sensual, and avaricious America, — I lament 
my fumbling fingers and stammering tongue." Again, 
as late as 1870, he writes to Carlyle: "There is no ex- 

25 ample of constancy like yours, and it always stings my 
stupor into temporary recovery and wonderful resolution 
to accept the noble challenge. But 'the strong hours 
conquer us;* and I am the victim of miscellany, — mis- 
cellany of designs, vast debility, and procrastination." 

30 The forlorn note belonging to the phrase, "vast de- 



EMERSON 469 

bility," recalls that saddest and most discouraged of 
writers, the author of Obermann, Senancour, with whom 
Emerson has in truth a certain kinship. He has, in com- 
mon with Senancour, his pureness, his passion for na- 
ture, his single eye; and here we find him confessing, 5 
hke Senancour, a sense in himself of sterility and^ im- 
potence. 

And now I think I have cleared the ground. I have 
given up to envious Time as much of Emerson as Time 
can fairly expect ever to obtain. We have not in Emer- 10 
son a great poet, a great writer, a great philosophy 
maker. His relation to us is not that of one of those 
personages; yet it is a relation of, I think, even superior 
importance. His relation to us is more like that of the 
Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius is 15 
not a great writer, a great philosophy maker; he is the 
friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit. 
Emerson is the same. He is the friend and aider of those 
who would live in the spirit. All the points in thinking 
which are necessary for this purpose he takes; but he 20 
does not combine them into a system, or present them as 
a regular philosophy. Combined in a system by a man 
with the requisite talent for this kind of thing, they 
would be less useful than as Emerson gives them to us; 
and the man with the talent so to systematize them would 25 
be less impressive than Emerson. They do very well as 
they now stand; — hke "bowlders," as he says; — in 
"paragraphs incompressible, each sentence an infinitely 
repellent particle." In such sentences his main points 



470 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

recur again and again, and become fixed in the mem- 
ory. 

We all know them. First and foremost, character. 
Character is everything. " That which all things tend 

5 to educe, — which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revo- 
lutions, go to form and deliver, — is character." Char- 
acter and self-reliance. ''Trust thyself! every heart vi- 
brates to that iron string." And yet we have our being 
in a not ourselves. "There is a power above and be- 

10 hind us, and we are the channels of its communica- 
tions." But our lives must be pitched higher. "Life 
must be lived on a higher plane; we must go up to a 
higher platform, to which we are always invited to as- 
cend; there the whole scene changes." The good we 

15 need is forever close to us, though we attain it not. " On 
the brink of the waters of life and truth, we are miserably 
dying." This good is close to us, moreover, in our daily 
life, and in the familiar, homely places. "The unre- 
mitting retention of simple and high sentiments in ob- 

20 scure duties, — that is the maxim for us. Let us be poised 
and wise, and our own to-day. Let us treat the men and 
women well, — treat them as if they were real; perhaps 
they are. Men live in their fancy, like drunkards whose 
hands are too soft and tremulous for successful labor. I 

25 settle myself ever firmer in the creed, that we should not 
postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where 
we are, by whomsoever we deal with; accepting our ac- 
tual companions and circumstances, however humbk or 
odious, as the mystic officials to whom the universe has 

30 delegated its whole pleasure for us. Massachusetts, 



EMERSON 471 

Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry 
places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic 
topography. But here we are; and if we will tarry a 
little we may come to learn that here is best. See to it 
only that thyself is here." Furthermore, the good is 5 
close to us all. " I resist the skepticism of our education 
and of our educated men. I do not believe that the dif- 
ferences of opinion and character in men are organic. 
I do not recognize, besides the class of the good and the 
wise, a permanent class of skeptics, or a class of conser- 10 
vatives, or of malignants, or of materialists. I do not 
beUeve in the classes. Every man has a call of the power 
to do something unique." Exclusiveness is deadly. 
" The exclusive in social life does not see that he excludes 
himself from enjoyment in the attempt to appropriate it. 15 
The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts 
the door of heaven on himself in striving to shut out 
others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall 
suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart you 
shall lose your own. The selfish man suffers more from 20 
his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness with- 
holds some important benefit." A sound nature will be 
inclined to refuse ease and self-indulgence. "To live 
with some rigor of temperance, or some extreme of gen- 
erosity, seems to be an asceticism which common good- 25 
nature would appoint to those who are at ease and in 
plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the 
great multitude of suffering men." Compensation, fi- 
nally, is the great law of hfe; it is everywhere, it is sure, 
and there is no escape from it. This is that "law alive 30 



472 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

and beautiful, which works over our heads and under 
our feet. Pitiless, it avails itself of our success w^hen 
we obey it, and of our ruin when we contravene it. 
We are all secret beUevers in it. It rewards actions 
5 after their nature. The reward of a thing well done is 
to have done it. The thief steals from himself, the 
swindler swindles himself. You must pay at last your 
own debt." 

This is tonic indeed! And let no one object that 

lo it is too general; that more practical, positive direction 
is what we mean; that Emerson's optimism, self-reli- 
ance, and indifference to favorable conditions for our 
life and growth have in them something of danger. 
"Trust thyself;" "what attracts my attention shall 

15 have it;" "though thou shouldest walk the world over 
thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune 
or ignoble;" "what w^e call vulgar society is that society 
whose poetry is not yet written, but which you shall 
presently make as enviable and renowned as any." 

20 With maxims like these, we surely, it may be said, 
run some risk of being made too well satisfied with our 
own actual self and state, however crude and imper- 
fect they may be. "Trust thyself?" It may be said 
that the common American or Englishman is more 

25 than enough disposed already to trust himself. I often 
reply, when our sectarians are praised for following 
conscience: Our people are very good in following 
their conscience; where they are not so good is in as- 
certaining whether their conscience tells them right. 

30 "What attracts my attention shall have it?" Well, 



EMERSON 473 

that is our people's plea when they run after the Salva- 
tion Army, and desire Messrs. Moody and Sankey. 
" Thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune 
or ignoble?" But think of the turn of the good people 
of our race for producing a life of hideousness and im- 5 
mense ennui; think of that specimen of your own New 
England life which Mr. Howells gives us in one of 
his charming stories which I was reading lately; think 
of the life of that ragged New England farm in the 
Lady of the Aroostook; think of Deacon Blood, and 10 
Aunt Maria, and the straight-backed chairs with black 
horsehair seats, and Ezra Perkins with perfect self- 
reliance depositing his travelers in the snow! I can 
truly say that in the little which I have seen of the life 
of New England, I am more struck with what has been 15 
achieved than with the crudeness and failure. But no 
doubt there is still a great deal of crudeness also. Your 
own novelists say there is, and I suppose they say true. 
In the New England, as in the Old, our people have to 
learn, I suppose, not that their modes of life are beau- 20 
tiful and excellent already; they have rather to learn 
that they must transform them. 

To adopt this line of objection to Emerson's deliv- 
erances would, however, be unjust. In the first place, 
Emerson's points are in themselves true, if under- 25 
stood in a certain high sense; they are true and fruit- 
ful. And the right work to be done, at the hour when 
he appeared, was to affirm them generally and abso- 
lutely. Only thus could he break through the hard 
and fast barrier of narrow, fixed ideas, which he found 30 



474 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

confronting him, and win an entrance for new ideas. 
Had he attempted developments which may now strike 
us as expedient, he would have excited fierce antago- 
nism, and probably effected little or nothing. The time 
5 might come for doing other work later, but the work 
which Emerson did was the right work to be done then. 
In the second place, strong as was Emerson's opti- 
mism, and unconquerable as was his beHef in a good 
result to emerge from all which he saw going on around 

10 him, no misanthropical satirist ever saw shortcomings 
and absurdities more clearly than he did, or exposed 
them more courageously. When he sees "the mean- 
ness," as he calls it, "of American politics," he con- 
gratulates Washington on being "long already happily 

15 dead," on being "wrapt in his shroud and for ever 
safe." With how firm a touch he delineates the faults 
of your two great poHtical parties of forty years ago! 
The Democrats, he says, "have not at heart the ends 
which give to the name of democracy what hope and 

20 virtue are in it. The spirit of our American radical- 
ism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has 
no ulterior and divine ends, but is destructive only 
out of hatred and selfishness. On the other side, the 
conservative party, composed of the most moderate, 

25 able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, 
and merely defensive of property. It vindicates no 
right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it 
proposes no generous policy. From neither party, 
when in power, has the world any benefit to expect in 

30 science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with the 



EMERSON 475 

resources of the nation." Then with what subtle though 
kindly irony he follows the gradual withdrawal in New 
England, in the last half century, of tender consciences 
from the social organizations, — the bent for experi- 
ments such as that of Brook Farm and the hke,— fol- 5 
lows it in all its "dissidence of dissent and Protestant- 
ism of the Protestant religion!" He even loves to rally 
the New Englander on his philanthropic al activity, 
and to find his beneficence and its institutions a bore! 
''Your miscellaneous popular charities, the education 10 
at college of fools, the building of meetinghouses to the 
vain end to which many of these now stand, alms to sots, 
and the thousandfold relief societies,— though I con- 
fess with shame that I sometimes succumb and give 
the dollar, yet it is a wicked dollar, which by and by 15 
I shall have the manhood to withhold." "Our Sun- 
day schools and churches and pauper societies are yokes 
to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody. 
There are natural ways of arriving at the same ends at 
which these aim, but do not arrive." "Nature does 20 
not like our benevolence or our learning much better 
than she likes our frauds and wars. When we come 
out of the caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition con- 
vention, or the Temperance meeting, or the Transcen- 
dental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us: 25 
'So hot, my little sir?' " 

Yes, truly, his insight is admirable; his truth is pre- 
cious. Yet the secret of his effect is not even in these; 
it is in his temper. It is in the hopeful, serene beau- 
tiful temper wherewith these, in Emerson, are indisso- 30 



476 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

lubly joined; in which they work, and have their being. 
He says himself: "We judge of a man's wisdom by 
his hope, knowing that the perception of the inexhausti- 
bleness of nature is an immortal youth." If this be so, 
5 how wise is Emerson ! for never had man such a sense 
of the inexhaustibleness of nature, and such hope. It 
was the ground of his being; it never failed him. Even 
when he is sadly avowing the imperfection of his literary 
power and resources, lamenting his fumbhng fingers and 

10 stammering tongue, he adds: "Yet, as I tell you, I am 
very easy in my mind and never dream of suicide. 
My whole philosophy, which is very real, teaches ac- 
quiescence and optimism. Sure I am that the right 
word will be spoken, though I cut out my tongue." In 

15 his old age, with friends dying and life failing, his note 
of cheerful, forward-looking hope is still the same. "A 
multitude of young men are growing up here of high 
promise, and I compare gladly the social poverty of 
my youth with the power on which these draw." His 

20 abiding word for us, the word by which being dead he 
yet speaks to us, is this: "That which befits us, em- 
bosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheer- 
fulness and courage, and the endeavor to realize our 
aspirations. Shall not the heart, which has received so 

25 much, trust the Power by which it lives?" 

One can scarcely overrate the importance of thus 
holding fast to happiness and hope. It gives to Emer- 
son's work an invaluable virtue. As Wordsworth's 
poetry is, in my judgment, the most important work 

30 done in verse, in our language, during the present 



EMERSON 477 

century, so Emerson's Essays are, I think, the most 
important work done in prose. His work is more 
important than Carlyle's. Let us be just to Carlyle, 
provoking though he often is. Not only has he that 
genius of his which makes Emerson say truly of his 5 
letters, that "they savor always of eternity." More 
than this may be said of him. The scope and upshot 
of his teaching are true; "his guiding genius," to quote 
Emerson again, is really "his moral sense, his percep- 
tion of the sole importance of truth and justice." But lo 
consider Carlyle's temper, as we have been consider- 
ing Emerson's! take his own account of it! "Per- 
haps London is the proper place for me after all, seeing 
all places are iwzproper: who knows? Meanwhile, I 
lead a most dyspeptic, solitary, self-shrouded Hfe; con- 15 
suming, if possible in silence, my considerable daily al- 
lotment of pain; glad when any strength is left in me for 
writing, which is the only use I can see in myself, — too 
rare a case of late. The ground of my existence is black 
as death; too black, when all void too; but at times there 20 
paint themselves on it pictures of gold, and rainbow, 
and lightning; all the brighter for the black ground, I 
suppose. Withal, T am very much of a fool." No, not 
a fool, but turbid and morbid, willful and perverse. 
"We judge of a man's wisdom by his hope." 25 

Carlyle's perverse attitude towards happiness cuts 
him off from hope. He fiercely attacks the desire 
for happiness; his grand point in Sartor, his secret 
in which the soul may find rest, is that one shall cease 
to desire happiness, that one should learn to say to 30 



478 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

oneself: "What if thou wert born and predestined 
not to be happy, but to be unhappy!" He is wrong; 
Saint Augustine is the better philosopher, who says: 
"Act we must in pursuance of what gives us most de- 
5 light." Epictetus and Augustine can be severe mor- 
alists enough; but both of them know and frankly say 
that the desire for happiness is the root and ground 
of man's being. Tell him and show him that he places 
his happiness wrong, that he seeks for delight where 

10 delight will never be really found; then you illumine 
and further him. But you only confuse him by tell- 
ing him to cease to desire happiness: and you will 
not tell him this unless you are already confused your- 
self. 

15 Carlyle preached the dignity of labor, the necessity 
of righteousness, the love of veracity, the hatred of 
shams. He is said by many people to be a great teacher, 
a great helper for us, because he does so. But what 
is the due and eternal result of labor, righteousness, 

20 veracity? — Happiness. And how are we drawn to 
them by one who, instead of making us feel that with 
them is happiness, tells us that perhaps we were pre- 
destined not to be happy but to be unhappy? 

You will find, in especial, many earnest preachers 

25 of our popular religion to be fervent in their praise 
and admiration of Carlyle. His insistence on labor, 
righteousness, and veracity, pleases them; his con- 
tempt for happiness pleases them too. I read the other 
day a tract against smoking, although I do not happen 

30 to be a smoker myself. "Smoking," said the tract, 



EMERSON 479 

"is liked because it gives agreeable sensations. Now 
it is a positive objection to a thing that it gives agreeable 
sensations. An earnest man will expressly avoid what 
gives agreeable sensations." Shortly afterwards I was 
inspecting a school, and I found the children reading a 5 
piece of poetry on the common theme that we are here 
to-day and gone to-morrow. I shall soon be gone, the 
speaker in this poem was made to say, — 

" And I shall be glad to go, 
For the world at best is a dreary place, lO 

And my life is getting low." 

How usual a language of popular religion that is, on our 
side of the Atlantic at any rate! But then our popular 
■religion, in disparaging happiness here below, knows 
very well what it is after. It has its eye on a happiness 15 
in a future life above the clouds, in the New Jerusalem, 
to be won by disliking and rejecting happiness here on 
earth. And so long as this ideal stands fast, it is very 
well. But for very many it now stands fast no longer; 
for Carlyle, at any rate, it had failed and vanished. 20 
Happiness in labor, righteousness, and veracity, — in the 
life of the spirit, — here was a gospel still for Carlyle to 
preach, and to help others by preaching. But he baffled 
them and himself by preferring the paradox that we 
are not born for happiness at all. 25 

Happiness in labor, righteousness, and veracity; in 
all the life of the spirit; happiness and eternal hope; — 
that was Emerson's gospel. I hear it said that Em- 
erson was too sanguine; that the actual generation in 



480 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

America is not turning out so well as he expected. 
Very likely he was too sanguine as to the near future; in 
this country it is difficult not to be too sanguine. Very 
possibly the present generation may prove unworthy of 
5 his high hopes; even several generations succeeding this 
may prove unworthy of them. But by his conviction 
that in the life of the spirit is happiness, and by his hope 
that this life of the spirit will come more and more to be 
sanely understood, and to prevail, and to work for hap- 

10 piness, — by this conviction and hope Emerson was great, 
and he will surely prove in the end to have been right in 
them. In this country it is difficult, as I said, not to 
be sanguine. Very many of your writers are over- 
sanguine, and on the ^vrong grounds. But you have 

15 two men who in what they have written show their 
sanguineness in a line where courage and hope are 
just, where they are also infinitely important, but where 
they are not easy. The two men are Franklin and 
Emerson.^ These two are, I think, the most distinc- 



20 ^ I found with pleasure that this conjunction of Emerson's 
name with FrankUn's had already occurred to an accomplished 
writer and dehghtful man, a friend of Emerson, left almost the 
sole survivor, alas ! of the famous literary generation of Boston, — 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Dr. Holmes has kindly allowed 

25 me to print here the ingenious and interesting lines, hitherto un- 
published, in which he speaks of Emerson thus : — 

"Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song, 
Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong ? 
He seems a winged Franklin, sweetly wise, 
30 Born to unlock the secret of the skies ; 



EMERSON 481 

tively and honorably American of your writers; they are 
the most original and the most valuable. Wise men 
everywhere know that we must keep up our courage and 
hope; they know that hope is, as Wordsworth well 
says, — 5 

" The paramount duty which heaven lays, 
For its own honor, on man's suffering heart." 

But the very word duty points to an effort and a struggle 
to maintain our hope unbroken. Franklin and Emer- 
son maintained theirs with a convincing ease, an in- 10 
spiring joy. Franklin's confidence in the happiness 
with which industry, honesty, and economy will crown 
the life of this work-day world, is such that he runs 
over with felicity. With a like felicity does Emerson 
run over, when he contemplates the happiness eternally 15 
attached to the true life in the spirit. You cannot prize 
him too much, nor heed him too diligently. He has 
lessons for both the branches of our race. I figure him 
to my mind as visible upon earth still, as still stand- 
ing here by Boston Bay, or at his own Concord, in his 20 
habit as he lived, but of heightened stature and shining 
feature, with one hand stretched out towards the East, 
to our laden and laboring England; the other towards 

And which the nobler calling — if 'tis fair 
Terrestrial with celestial to compare — 25 

To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame, 
Or walk the chambers w^hence the lightning came 
Amidst the sources of its subtile fire, 
And steal their effluence for his lips and lyre? " 
Prose— 31 



482 NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE 

the ever-growing West, to his own dearly-loved America, 
— "great, intelligent, sensual, avaricious America." To 
us he shows for guidance his lucid freedom, his cheer- 
fulness and hope; to you his dignity, delicacy, serenity, 
S elevation. 



NOTES 

The heavy marginal figures stand for page, and the lighter ones for line. 

THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 

The lectures of the series, 73^*? English Comic Writers^ were 
deUvered at the Surrey Institution in 1818. 

10 : 2. Mine to read. See Gray's Letters, April, 1742. 

12 : I. Fielding, in speaking. See Joseph Andrews, Book 
III, Chap. I. 

12 : 29. Blackstone or De Lolme. Writers on English law. 

13 : 24. Don Quixote. Famous Spanish novel by Cervantes, 
published 1605-1615. 

17 : 8. Still prompts. Pope, Essay on Man, IV, 3. 

19 : 3. Guzman d'Alfarache. A novel by Mateo Aleman, 
1599. 

19 : 17. Gil Bias. A novel by Le Sage, 1715-1735. 

19 : 22. Lazarillo de Tormes. Probably by Diego Hurtado 
de Mendoza, 1553. 

28 : 19. IntUS et in cute. "Within and in the skin." Per- 
sius. Satires, III, 30. 

33 : 18. Dr. Johnson. See Hill's edition of Boswell's Life of 
Johnson, II, 174. 

35 : 8. Books are a real world. Wordsworth, Personal 
Talk, stanza 3. 

36 : 19. Goldsmith .... should call him " a dull 
fellow." See Hill's Boswell's Life of Johnson, II, 222. 

47 : I. Quod sic mihi ostendis. Paraphrased or misquoted 
from Horace, Ars Poetica, Une 188: " Quodcunque ostendis 
mihi sic incredulus odi." Freely translated by Howes this runs: 
483 



4^4 NOTES 

" Much that were only passing strange if heard; | When seen, re- 
volted sense declares absurd." 

48 : 30. Author of Caleb Williams. William Godwin, 1756- 
1836. 

49 : 16. His chamber. Faerie Queene, Book II, Canto IX, 
stanza 50. 

Other explanatory comments on this essay may be found 
in Vol. VIII of The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, edited 
by A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover. 

BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON 

The original of this essay appeared in Fraser^s Magazine, May, 
1832. The references are to G. B, Hill's edition of Boswell's Life. 

62 : 3. lo-pseans. 'Iw naidi', " Hail Apollo 1" 

65 : 18. Ma foi, etc. " Faith, sir, our happiness depends 
■upon the way our blood circulates." 

68 : 2. Four Books. Tyers' Biographical Sketch ; Mrs. 
ViozA's Anecdotes ; Hawkin's Z//^; Murphy's .fi'^joy. 

68 : 6. Sextum quid. Sixth something. 

78 : 12. Odyssey. See Boswell's Advertisement to the Sec- 
ond Edition, Life^ I, 13. 

79 : 12. Waste fantasy. Ascribed in Latter-Day Pamphlets 
to Novalis. 

81 : 27. Import of Reality. See Carlyle's essay on Biog- 
raphy. 

85 :-2. SmoUettS and Belshams. Smollett wrote a History 
of England, and Belsham (1752-1827) a History of Great Britain 
to the Cojiclusion of the Peace of Amiens in 1802. 

87 : 13. .ffineas Sylvius. Pope Pius II (1405-1464), who, 
when a young man, visited Scotland. 

89 : 28. Taking notes. See Bums, On the Late Captain 
Grose's Peregrinations thro' Scotland. 

91 : 18. Iron leaf. Past and Present, Book III, Chap. X. 

92 : 20. Natus sum, etc " I was born ; I hungered ; I 
sought [food] ; now, having taken my fill, I rest." 



BOSWELL'S life of JOHNSON 485 

100 ! 9. A chacun, etc. '• To each according to his capac- 
ity ; to each capacity according to its works." 

103 : 24. Translation. Johnson translated Pope's Messiah 
into Latin. 

107 : 15. Scrogginses. Scroggin is the poet in Goldsmith's 
poem: A Description of an Author's Bedchamber. 

107 : 28. Carpe diem. " Seize the day," Horace, Odes, I, 
XI, 8. 

110: II. Lord of the lion heart, etc. Smollett, Ode to 
Independence. 

Ill : 12. Msecenasship. Maecenas was a wealthy Roman, 
the friend of Horace and Virgil. He is frequently referred to as 
the type of literary patron. 

114 : I. Shepherd in Virgil. Eclogues, VHI, 43-45. 

126 : 23. Impransus. " Dinnerless." 

129 : 4. He said, a man might hve. Boswell, Life, I, 122. 
The speaker is not Johnson, as Carlyle implies, but an Irish 
painter. 

129 : 15. On another occasion, foknsonian Miscellanies^ 
(ed. Hill), I, 180. 

132:17. Vomissement, etc. " Devil's vomit." 

133 : I. Gooseberry-fool. See Goldsmith's Retaliation. 

134 : 1. Res gestae. "Affairs transacted." 

134 : 3. Stat Parvi, etc. "There remains the shadow of a 
little name." 

146 : 19. Salve magna parens! "Hail, great mother," Vir- 
gil, Georgics, II, 173. 

147 : I . Sunday, October 18, 1767. See fohnsonian Mis 
cellanies, I, 45. 

147 : 27. A less capable reporter, i. e., Croker. See Life, 
IV, 430. 

148 : 10. Moonlight of memory. Froude, Carlyle in Lon- 
don, I, 17. 

149 : 20. His rusty brown morning suit. Life, II, 465. 
149 : 27. A gentleman who. Johnsonian Miscellanies, II, 

259. 



486 NOTES 

152 : i8. Acerrimi ingenii, etc. '«0f keenest intelligence 
and of little learning." Life, II, 465. 
152 : 27. Editiones Principes. " First editions.'' 
152 : 27, Monsheer Nongtongpaw! English pronuncia- 
tion of Monsieur N' entend-pas (Mr. Doesn't-Understand). 

MOORE'S LIFE OF LORD BYRON 

The essay on Byron first appeared in the Edinburgh Review, 
June, 1 83 1. 

166 : 24. Jedwood justice. " Hang first and try after- 
wards." A summary way of dealing with border thieves. 

172 : 16. Longwood. The name of the house in St. Helena 
where Napoleon died May 5, 1821. 

176 : 7. Pursuits of Literature. By Thomas James 
Mathias (1754-1835). 

176: 12. Hoole's translations. John Hoole (1727-1803) 
translated Tasso, Ariosto, and Metastasio. 

176:18,19. Mala in se . . . mala prohibita. "Evils 
in themselves . . . evils because prohibited." 

178 : 27. That most sweet and graceful passage. Taken 
from Human Life, p. 120 (Aldine Edition). 

181 : 10, 13. M. Jourdain . . . . M . Tomes. Char- 
acters in Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and in V Amour 
Medecin. 

184:29. Douglas. A tragedy by John Home (1722-1808). 

184 : 30. Triumphs of Temper. A poem by WilUam Hay- 
ley (1745-1820). 

186 : 26. Delia Grusca. The pseudonym used by Robert 
Merry, a member of the school of sentimental poetry known as 
the Delia Cruscan School, which originally met in Florence. 

186 : 28. Chatterton's forgeries. The so-called Rowley 
poems of Thomas Chatterton, " the marvelous boy" (1752-1770), 
ascribed to one Thomas Rowley. 

186 : 29. Forgeries of Ireland. This refers to the Shake- 
spearean forgeries of William H. Ireland (1777-1835). 



LIFE or LORD BYRON 487 

187 : 30. The vision and the faculty divine. See Words- 
worth, Excursion, Book 1. 

188 : 20. Tutte le rime, etc. " All the following love poems, 
all are for her, and entirely hers, and hers only ; for certainly I 
shall never sing of any other woman." 

189 : I. Manner is all in all, etc. Cowper, Table Talk 
from which is also taken the expression " creamy smoothness," 
Une 16. 

189 : 7. Mi cadevano, etc. " They would fall from my hands 
because of the inertness, commonness, and prolixity of the ex- 
pressions and of the verse, not to mention the nervelessness 
of the thoughts. Now why on earth should this, our divine lan- 
guage, so virile still, and energetic, aud fierce in Dante's mouth, 
why should it become so pithless and effeminate in tragic 
dialogue ? " 

192 : 22. Bays. (More correctly Bayes.) A character in Tke 
Rehearsal (1672), a farce by George Villiers, second Duke of 
Buckingham (1627-1688). 

192 : 23. Bilboa. The original name given to the character 
Bayes. 

195 19. Marriage of Figaro. A comedy (1784) by Pierre 
Caron de Beaumarchais (i 732-1 799), a famous French drama- 
tist. 

195 : 22. Juvenal. A Roman satirist. See Satire, II, 103- 
107. "A mirror! the baggage of a civil war! Doubtless it 
showed a consummate general to kill Galba, and the constancy 
of a great citizen to pamper his own skin ; to aim at the spoils 
of the Palace on the field of Bedriacum (sic) and to spread with 
his fingers the bread- poultice pressed upon his face 1 " 

196 : 20. Hermogenes. A character in Jonson's Poetaster. 

196 : 26. Dryden satirized the Duke. See Absalom and 
Achitophel, II, 544-568. 

197 : I. The Wharton of Pope. See Pope, Moral Essays, 
Ep. I, II, 180-209. 

197 : 2. Sporus. See Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, II, 

305-333- 



488 NOTES 



SWIFT 

This is the first lecture in the series of lectures entitled The 
English Humorists, delivered in England, Scotland, and America 
in 1 85 1. The essay is here given without the full notes provided 
by James Hannayfor the first edition of 1853 and sometimes mis- 
taken for Thackeray's own work. 

211 : I. Harlequin. A famous comic figure in pantomime. 

213 : 20. Dr. Wilde of Dublin. The Closing Years of Dean 
Swiff s Life (1849) is the work referred to. 

214 : 9. Fielding's staircase in the Temple. The two 
Inns of Court, headquarters for barristers, now constitute the 
Temple. 

215 : 6. Opposition. A political term indicating the rival 
party to the one in power. 

215 : 24. Macheath. The leading character in Gay's Beg- 
gar's Opera (1728). 

216 : I . Miter and crosier. Headdress and staff of church 
dignity, in this case the deanship. 

216 : 14. Condottieri. Mercenaries, therefore plunderers. 

216 : 14. The Boyne. The battle of the Boyne between 
James II and William of Orange was fought in Ireland, July i, 
1690, and was won by the forces of the latter. 

216 : 20. South Sea Bubble. A financial scheme of the 
second decade of the eighteenth century to monopolize the trade 
of Spanish South America. Millions were made and lost, before 
it burst. 

217 : 13. Conduct at Copenhagen. The English bom- 
barded Copenhagen in 1807. 

220 : 6. Gulielmus. Latin for " WilUam." 

220: 12. Pays his court to the Ciceronian majesty. 
Cicero was the model of Latin prose composition. 

220 : 20. Mild Dorothea. The reference is from Sir Wil- 
liam Temple's Illness a7id Recovery (1693). 

222 : 5. Plates-bandes. Borders of flowers in the garden. 

226 : 19. Peccavi. " I have sinned." 



LITERATURE 489 

228 : 3. Abudah in the Arabian story. A character in 
James Ridley's Tales of the Genii (1764). 

228 : 14. SaBva indignatio. " Fierce indignation. " 

230 : 12. Almanach des Gourmands. A famous French 
calendar of " good cheer " running to many editions in the early 
nineteenth century. 

230 : 13 On nait rotisseur. "One is born a cook." Com- 
pare, " Poets are born, not made." 

233 : 8. Yahoos. A race of brutes described in Gulliver's 
Travels. 

234:20. Miserrimus. " Most wretched." 

237 : 22. When on my sickly couch I lay. From To 
Stella visitifig me in my sickness (1720). 

239 : 23. Gadenus. The name Swift gives himself in his poem 
Cadenus and Vanessa (1726) ; an anagram of decamts, " dean." 



LITERATURE 

This lecture was read in the School of Philosophy and Letters 
of the Roman Catholic University at Dublin in November, 1858. 

249 : 6. Joseph makes himself known. Genesis, xlv. 

257 : 26. Facit indignatio versus. Paraphrased from Juve- 
nal, Satires, I, 79 : Si natura negat, facit indignatio verstim, 
" Though nature grudge poetic fire, | Just indignation will inspire " 
(King). 

257 : 29. Poeta nascitur, non fit. •' The poet is bom, not 
made." 

258 : 5. Vision of Mirza. An allegorical story told by Addi- 
son in The Spectator, No. 159. 

258 : 16. Aristotle . . . the magnanimous man. See 
The Nicomachean Ethics, Book IV, Chap. 9. 

258 : 25. Ki/Set yaluv. Newman translates this in the next 
phrase. See Homer's Iliad, I, 405. 

259 : 5. Macbeth. See Act V, sc. 3, 1. 40. 
259 : 16. Hamlet. See Act I, sc. 2, 1. 77. 



490 NOTES 

260 : 9. Os magna sonaturum. " Command of lofty lan- 
guage." Horace, Satires^ I, 4, 43. 

262 : 15. Apollo Belvidere. A famous statue in the Vati- 
can, Rome. 

262 : 28. The poet's eye. See Midsummer A^ighfs Dream, 
Act V, sc. 1, 1. 12. 

271 : 10. Copiaverborum. " A full vocabulary." A subtitle 
in Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory. 

272 : 2. Nil molitur inepte. " He attempts nothing injudi- 
ciously." Horace, Ars Foetica, I, 140. 

272 : 6. Quo fit, Ut omnis, etc. " Whence it appears that the 
whole life of this old (poet) is as open to view as if it had been 
graven on a votive tablet." Horace, Satires, II, i, 32. 

272 : II. Otiose. Leisurely, therefore tiresome. 



WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, AND BROWNING 

The essay on Pure, Ornate and Grotesque Art, first appeared 
in 1864 in the National Review. 

281 : 3. Henry Dunbar. A mystery novel, published in 
1864. It was written by Miss Braddon (Mrs. John Maxwell). 

281 : 19. It won't do. Jeffrey's review of Wordsworth's ^^- 
cursion began with the words : " This will never do 1 " 

281 : 24. Mr. Carlyle . . . contradicted it. See the 
last part of his essay on Goethe. 

284 : 25. Disjecta membra. " Scattered parts." 

287 : 2. Which is the world of all of us. Wordsworth, 
Prelude, Book XI. 

287 : 21. The first conversation. Bagehot quotes from the 
Appendix to Carlyle's Life of Schiller, note C. 

292 : 15. Mr. Arnold . . . put forth a theory. In 
the preface to first edition of his poems, Mixed Essays, p. 489. 

293:8. Mrs. Veal. Defoe wrote so matter-of-fact an account 
of this imaginary person's appearance after death, that many 
people were hoaxed into a behalf in its reality. 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 49 1 

306 : 12. The well-known lines. Shelley's The Isle. 

311 : 29. Mr. Arnold has justly observed. In Mixed 
Essays, p. 499. 

315 : 13. One of his characters. Charles Reding in Loss 
and Gain, Vol. I, Chap. III. 

319 : 22. When Heaven sends sorrow. Newman's Warn- 
ings. 

334 : 25. Which, be they what they may. From Words- 
worth's l7itimaiio7ts of Immortality, IX. 

334 : 30. Immersed in Matter. Locke, Htiman Under- 
standing, Book IV, Chap. Ill, i, 2. 

337 : 7. And yet, etc. From Clough's Come, Poet, Come. 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 

This essay first appeared in the Fortnightly Review for Novem- 
ber, 1869, under the title, Notes on Lionardo da Vinci. 

342 : 21. Vasari. A Tuscan painter (1511-1574), famous as 
the writer of biographies of Italian artists. 

347 : 27. Uffizii. The name of the famous art gallery in 
Florence. 

349 ; 19. Paracelsus. A mediaeval German-Swiss philoso- 
pher. 

349 : 19. Cardan. An Italian astrologer (i 501-1576). 

351 : 26. 'SubtiUtas naturae. "The refinement of nature." 

352 : 17. Bizarre. Odd. 
352 : 17. Recherche. Select. 
354 : 15. Ennui. Tedium. 

354 : 30. QuantO piu, etc. " The greater the bodily fatigue 
that an art demands, the more vulgar it is." 

356 : 24. Bulla. A locket of gold. 

357:21. Belli capelli, etc "Beautiful hair, abundant and 
curly." 

359 : II. Ambrosian Library. A library at Milan, founded 
in 1609. 



492 NOTES 

360 : 27. Brera. An art gallery in Milan. 

362 : 14. InfeUx sum. " Unhappy am I." 

363 : 17. Leda or Pomona. In Greek mythology Leda 
was the mother of Helen and of Castor and Pollux; Pomona in 
Roman mythology was the goddess of fruit trees. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 

The essay was written for the Cornhill Magazine, September, 
1871. 

375 : 20. Garlyle. For quotations and references see Car- 
lyle's essay on Sir Walter Scott published in 1837, and now 
printed in Vol. VII of the Critical and Miscellaneous Es- 
says. 

380 : 17. As Pope puts it. Imitations of Horace, Epistle to 
Augustus, 69-72. 

380 : 23. Byron . . . taunted Scott. In English 
Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 

383 : 28. Blind piper. Wandering Willie's Tale. 

390 : 3. Thackeray. See his Rebecca and Rozuena, Vol. IX, 
105 (Biographical Ed.). 

391 : 24. Orton. The name of the claimant in the famous 
Tichborne case, 187 2-1 874. 

393 : 6. Lockhart tells us. See Life of Scott, Vol. VII, 
ch. 60, pp. 13-14. 

396 : 2. Strawberry Hill. The " Gothic Castle " of Horace 
Walpole. 

406 : 18. Poem about Helvellyn. From third stanza of 
poem of that name. 

407 : 10. Irving visited Scott. See Irving's Abbotsford. 
Scott is quoted thus : " When I have been for some time in the 
rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is like ornamented garden 
land, I begin to wish myself back among my own honest gray 
hills; and if I did not see the heather at least once a year I 
think I should die." 



MACAULAY 493 

MACAULAY 

Morley's essay was published in the Fortnightly Review^ 
April, 1876. 

415 : 4. Der Einzige. " The Unique." 

416 : 9. Quintilian. Institutes of Oratory, Book X, Chap. I. 
" If he had been willing to restrain rather than indulge his 
genius, what could that man not have done ! " 

416 : 27. The Steep, etc. Seattle's Minstrel, stanza I. 

418 : 18. Mackintosh's . . . panegyric. From Mack- 
intosh's Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy (1830). 

419:8. Style coupe . . . soutenu. Abrupt style, 
elevated style. 

420 : 26. Emerson. See English Traits. 

421 : 15. In speaking of Hallam. Macaulay, Misc. Works, 
I, 201. 

423 : 27. Multa as well as multum. " Quantity as well as 
profundity." 

426 : 30. About Turenne. Macaulay, History, Vol. I. 

429 : 18. Anytus and Meletus. See Plato's Apology. 

429:27. Semper, ubique, etc. "Always, everywhere, and 
by all." 

432 : 6. Et mon vers, etc. *' My verse, good or ill, always 
means something." 

438 : II. Apostrophe in Carlyle. French Revolution, Vol. I, 
Book 5, Chap. 7. 

440 : 5. Falkland. See Clarendon's History of the Rebellion 
(ed. Macray), Vol. Ill, p. 178. 

440 : 21. Passage of Burke's. Address to the British Colo- 
nists of North America, Vol. 6, 189. 

443 : 20. 'fi fnapbv, etc. " Abominable, and altogether abomi- 
nable, and most abominable." 

445 : 5. Account of Boswell. Misc. Works, I, 601. 

445 : II. Montesquieu. Misc. Works, I, 102. 

446 : 14. Addison. Misc. Works, III, 443. 
446 : 22. rb a-€nv6p. Something holy or august. 



494 NOTES 

EMERSON 

Arnold's Emerson was a lecture first delivered to a Boston 
Audience in 1883. 

452 : I. Undergraduate. Arnold was at Oxford from 1841 
to 1845. 

452 : 12. Oratory at Birmingham. After Newman joined 
the Catholic church, he took up his residence at Birmingham, 
where he established the Oratory, an institute founded in the 
1 6th century by St. Philip Neri. 

452 : 22. St. Mary's. The church at Oxford where Univer- 
sity sermons are preached. Newman was vicar from 1828 to 
1843. 

453 : 10. Littlemore. To this place, near Oxford, Newman 
withdrew after resigning his living at St. Mary's. 

464: 1. Last enchantments. See "Preface" to Arnold's 
Essays in Criticism, i st series. 

454 : 9. Sentence of Carlyle. See " Death of Edward Irv- 
ing," Critical Essays, Vol. V, 127. 

454 : 17. Oarlyle's translation. Published in 1824. 

454 : 25. Youths' Dirge. Wilhelm Meister, Book VIII, 
Chap. 8. 

455 : 10. Apparition of Emerson. See Lowell's Emerson 
the Lecturer, Works, I, 349. 

457 : 23. Patience on a Monument. Twelfth Night, II, 
4, 117- 
457 : 24. Darkness visible. Paradise Lost, I, 63. 

457 : 25. Where ignorance is bliss. Ode on a Distant Pros- 
pect 0/ Eton College. 

458 : 27. Milton. The words in the tractate on Education 
(Prose Works, Bohn Ed. 473) are " simple, sensuous, and pas- 
sionate." 

459 : 14. Exceptional passages. The first is from Volun- ^ 
taries ; the second is from Sacrifice ; the third from May-Day. 

462 : 29. Oarlyle's devouring eyes . . . thirsty eyes. 
Correspondence of Carlyle and Etnerson, (3d ed.) I, 308 ; I, 255. 



EMERSON 495 

463 : 2. Description . . . Fraser. Correspondence, I, 
65. 

463 : 12. John Sterling. Correspondence, I, 140. 

463 : 17. Invitation of Emerson. Correspondence, I, 199. 

465 : 25. For me it is too ethereal. Correspondence, I, 304. 

465 : 28. Emerson's Orations. Correspondence, I, 217. 

466 : 8, 9. Lapidary style . . . Here I sit, etc. Cor- 
respondence, I, 345 ; I, 161. 

468 : 6. Alas, my friend. Correspondence, I, 238. 

468 : II. Friend's praise. Correspondence, I, 340, 341, 342. 

468 : 24. There is no example. Correspondence, II, 334. 

476 : 10. Yet, as I tell you. Correspondence, I, 341. 

476 : 16. A multitude of young men. Correspondence, II, 
337- 

481 : 4. Wordsworth well says. In sonnet beginning : 
"Here pause: the poet claims at least this praise," written in 
181 1 and found on page 219 of Arnold's selection of Words- 
worth's poems published in the Golden Treasury Series. 



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